Sports for the disabled: the evolution from rehabilitation to competitive sport.

A historic review of sports for the disabled can be under-taken from a number of different approaches. First of all, the concepts which led to its origin and early development have evolved and changed considerably over time. The range of sports and the numbers of participants have increased. The early perceptions of limits to performance by reason of impairment proved to be inaccurate and as they have become less restricted performance has continued to expand. The role of sports medicine in studying and measuring performance and in demonstrating the training possibilities of athletes with disabilities has continued to grow. Finally, sports participation by the disabled has served as a vivid illustration of success and achievement to the public at large, who are very aware of what athletic accomplishment means in physical and psychological terms. Athletes themselves see sports as a pathway to integration in society, and there are those who look forward to Olympic integration not just with demonstration events but with full participation in medal events at the regular Olympic Games. Sports participation has contributed significantly to the field of clinical rehabilitation. It was introduced as part of a patients's hospital programme by Guttman n 1944. He recognised the physiological and psychological values of sport in the management of paraplegic hospital inpatients, and in his early writings this was his persistent message.' For some years development continued within the medical rehabilitation environment, and studies through the early seventies reflected this influence.23 Sports physiologists and biomechanists also showed some interest in analysing performance in particular sports.4 From those beginnings, sports for the disabled has developed beyond rehabilitation sport to include within its spectrum sports for recreation, health, fitness, and competition. The ultimate competitive model, paral-ympic level participation, was achieved in 1960, when the first Paralympic Games were held in Rome, following the Olympic Games of that year. The 400 participants were all spinal injured. The paralympic sports movement now includes not only spinal injured, but also amputees, blind people, and athletes with cerebral palsy. This year in the Atlanta Paralympics, there were 3500 competitors representing 120 countries. The staging of two demonstration wheelchair track races, a men's 1500 and a women's 800 metre event in the Atlanta Olympics is a further illustration of how far the concept of competitive sports for the disabled has advanced since the first paralympics in 1960. The advances in sports performance which have occurred in …