ABSTRACT
Hello prof: You can hardly credit it: the biggest debate in sports at the moment is over whether disabled sports should be discontinued. It is 70 years since the inaugural National Wheelchair Games in 1958. As you know, this led to athletic tournaments specifically for disabled competitors, which eventually evolved into the Paralympics. By the turn of the century, international events for the blind and partially sighted, paraplegics, tetraplegics, and amputees were commonplace. Some years ago, some competitors with handicaps demanded admission into the Olympics. Their times and distances were of the requisite qualifying standard and the IOC consented. It didn’t take long before amputees (not a term that’s used nowadays, by the way), were beating fully-abled rivals in events where you might not expect them to be competitive, such as cycling and the pole vault.
