Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games
This event is organised after a delay of an year due to Covid-19 pandemic.
What’s the history?The first Paralympic Games took place in 1960 in Rome, featuring just 400 athletes from 23 countries.
The name Paralympics is intended to indicate an event happening in parallel, alongside the Olympics.
It grew from the Stoke Mandeville Games, a tournament organised in Britain in 1948 for 16 male and female wheelchair athletes, some of them World War II veterans.
It was the idea of Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who oversaw the spinal injuries unit at a hospital in Stoke Mandeville that treated veterans.
Which sports are there?
A total of 22 sports will be contested at the Games, including new additions badminton and taekwondo.
Most sports are common to the Olympics and Paralympics, including athletics and swimming.
Some that feature in both Games involve modifications in their Paralympic form, like wheelchair rugby.
Two sports, boccia and goalball, are unique to the Paralympics.
What are the criteria for para-sports?
Paralympians compete in different categories within a given sport based on their particular impairment.
The Paralympic movement covers 10 impairment types that fall broadly into three categories: physical impairments, vision impairment and intellectual impairment.
Some sports are open to athletes in all categories, while others are reserved for specific impairments.
Within each category, athletes are assessed to see whether they meet a minimum impairment level, to ensure a fair playing field – although there have been controversies over some placements in recent years.
In some sports like athletics, they are placed in a certain sports class, again pitting them against athletes with similar impairments to ensure equity.India in Tokyo Paralympics
India will now field their biggest contingent at the
Tokyo Paralympics.
54 athletes are set to compete in nine sporting disciplines -- archery, athletics, badminton, canoeing, shooting, swimming, powerlifting, table tennis and taekwondo.
Tejash mourya
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