When Did The Paralympics Start? Here’s A Brief History Of The Games

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The Australian team parades around the Acqua Acetosa Ground in Rome on Sept. 18, 1960, during the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games.

Walter Attenni/AP

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Walter Attenni/AP

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German-British neurologist Dr. Ludwig Guttmann (who actually escaped from the Nazis) opened a spinal injuries center at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1944 at the request of the British government.

At that time in the U.K., «you were left in hospital to die because the assumption was that you wouldn’t have anything to contribute back to society so you might as well be allowed to slip away,» Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson, one of Britain’s most successful Paralympians, told NPR in 2012. Guttmann challenged that notion, she explained.

The activities there grew in both scope and intensity. As the IPC put it, «in time, rehabilitation sport evolved to recreational sport and then to competitive sport.»

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France’s Claude Issorat celebrates winning the 1500m wheelchair race at the summer Paralympic Games on Aug. 2, 1992, in Barcelona.

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The Paralympic and Olympic games have taken place in the same host cities and venue since the Summer Games of 1988 and the Winter Games of 1992, thanks to an agreement between the IPC and the International Olympic Committee.

It’s also quite literally in the event’s name. The word «Paralympic» comes from the Greek preposition «para» (beside) and the word «Olympic,» meaning that the two games exist side-by-side.

This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog.

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