Paralympics
Hello and welcome back my blog all of you readers out there. The topics on the agenda this week are my original thoughts on what the term "para" meant in the word Paralympics. As well as what I have learned this week on the concept of the "parallel games."
Starting with the term "para" in the word Paralympics, I thought it was short for paraplegic. My thought process was that the word Paralympics was a combination of the shorten term "para" from the word paraplegic and Olympics. After reading this week's chapter on the Paralympics, I asked some of my friends and family members what they thought "para" in Paralympics meant. What I found out was I was definitely not alone on the misconception that "para" is not short for paraplegic. According to the article, we were not too far off especially because early on "para" truly did mean paraplegic (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). Although, overtime that was not applicable due to the growth of the Paralympics including more diversity among the disabled athletes other than just paraplegics (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). The "para" in Paralympics now referring to the Greek definition meaning "next to," which is saying that the Paralympics is parallel with the Olympic Games (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024).
I am going to go ahead and transition to the second topic of this week's blog, which is what I have learned this week on the concept of the "parallel games." The "parallel games" or better known as the Paralympics was started in the late 1940s by a man named Sir Ludwig Guttmann (Figure 1). He was the director of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at the Ministry of Pensions Hospital, Stroke Mandeville, Aylesbury (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). Here Guttmann introduced sport to his rehabilitation process for his patients who at the time were mostly injured military personnel (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). From this birthed the second largest multisport events next to the Olympic Games, which was first called the Stoke Mandeville Games (Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R., 2024). This to me as a physical therapy major is quite remarkable, that the Paralympics started out as an injury rehabilitation program. This inspires me as a future physical therapist that possibly one day, I could start my own non-profit local version of the Paralympics.
It is time to wrap up this week's blog, starting with some key points that I touched on. Aas well as followed by a short story on when I first learned about the Paralympics. First, I was a bit surprised that "para" in Paralympics does not actually mean paraplegic. Although, I think the meaning of "para" being parallel to the Olympic Games is incredible. Next, I truly loved learning about the origin story for the Paralympics. As I stated previously, I think how the Paralympics started is inspiring especially as a physical therapy major. Lastly, the way I first found out about the Paralympics was at an ice hockey rink in Canada. When I was about fourteen years old, I was with my hockey team up at an ice rink where the boards for the team benches were clear. At first, I thought this was odd cause I had never seen a rink with clear boards before. Later that same day I had discovered the reason for the clear boards were so that the players of the sled hockey team could see out onto the ice (Figure 2). Overall, this was where I first learned about sled hockey and the Paralympics.
Thank you again to all my new and returning readers, stay tuned for next week's blog!
References
Hardin, R., & Pate, J. R. (2024). Introduction to Adaptive Sport and Recreation. Human Kinetics Publishers. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781718214545
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