ABSTRACT
With the establishment of the Stoke Mandeville Games, the antecedent of the Paralympic Games, participation was considered the most important part of provision in sport for the disabled. The rehabilitative nature of sport for the disabled will always be in the background, as athletes who suffer traumatic injury will need rehabilitation before being able to participate in sport. Likewise, it takes athletes a while to become accomplished enough as participants in order to become involved in high-performance sporting practice, the current pinnacle of which is the Paralympic Games. The 1984 Paralympic Games marked the end of an era that had advocated the importance of sports participation in the lives of impaired individuals. Problems with organising the Games meant that they were held in two different countries. In the autumn of 1988, directly following the Olympic Games in Seoul, the hosts agreed to stage the Paralympic Games.
