Paralympic Games - the impossible is possible

The Paralympic Games are a field where our athletes successfully perform for many years, demonstrating almost super-possibilities. The number of awards won by the Paralympics often exceeds the number of medals that the main Olympic team has earned. For example, in 2010 Russian Paralympic athletes were the first in the team event, winning 38 medals.

Paralympic games, whose history is only a few decades, is incommensurably younger than the Olympic Games themselves. The history of the latter goes back thousands of years and their ancestor is considered by some legends Zeus himself, on the other - Hercules. The first games that have historical confirmation, recognized the competition, established by King Epiph in Hellas in the ninth century BC. They were called to stop civil strife in the scattered in many small states of Greece of that time and demonstrate the dexterity, strength and health of athletes.

The fact that the movement has a positive effect on the recovery of the body after injuries was noticed back in the 18th century. Also in the early 20th century, in Paris, the first attempts were made to attract people with disabilities to competitions. For them, in 1924, a championship was held in athletics, shooting, swimming, cycling and football, which was the prototype of what in 1960 was called the "Paralympic Games". An interesting feature of the competition for the deaf was the fact that the teams that came from different countries, perfectly communicated without interpreters, tk. The international fingerprint system of the time allowed them to understand each other with gestures.

However, until 1960, when 400 athletes from more than 20 countries competed in Rome, another event occurred, which also relates to the history of the Paralympic Games. This is the Stoke-Mandeville Games of 1948, in which paralyzed athletes, former military men, competed in archery. Such competition was widely supported by charitable foundations and the disabled themselves, who listed large donations for the construction of a specially equipped stadium.

Today, the Paralympic Games are held in the winter and summer once every four years after the Olympic Games. In this winter games are held in the same city as the summer. The summer program includes more than 20 sports - from various exercises in wheelchairs (rugby, basketball, fencing) to dressage. The winter program includes biathlon, cross-country skiing, curling on wheels, ice hockey, and from 2014 the program will also include snowboarding exercises.

The first Paralympic Games, the swimming in the program of which gave development to this sport, allowed to compete today for athletes without limbs, deaf, blind. At the same time, the number of participants is increasing every year, and technical equipment, special conditions and rules allow you to swim on equal, for example, visually impaired and completely blind athletes.

The Paralympic Games are held in the same way as the Olympic Games. There is a doping control (since 2004), an analysis of the health of athletes, opening ceremonies, closing, accounting medals, team tests. It is interesting that in the near future in such discipline as wheelchair racing it is planned to open competitions among ordinary sportsmen. And, perhaps, they will also be included in the program of the Olympic Games.