ABSTRACT
It was in 1969, six years after the creation of the first sports federation for the physically disabled in France, that regular ties with the Ministry of Youth and Sports began to develop. The aim of this article is to question how these ties affected the development of the movement towards the model of ‘classic’ sports federations. Between 1968 and 1973, data from the Ministry of Youth and Sports kept in the National Archives, along with information published in the federal press (crossed with accounts from persons with prominent roles d in disabled sports at the time), reveals a reorganization of the internal relations between managers (who are physically disabled people) and doctors (who generally come from the field of re-education). These new circumstances entailed their collaboration with another federal agent, who consequently became centrally important: the sports technician.
