Sports
Paralympics
The Paralympics are the world’s premier sporting event for athletes with disabilities. There are 20 sports sub-divided into 6 disability categories. At the next games in Beijing, China in 2008 some 145 countries will field around 4,000 disabled sportspeople.
The sports that are exclusively the province of wheelchair users are
- basketball
- fencing
- rugby
- tennis.
Wheelchairs are also one of the 6 disability categories for all of the Paralympic sports.
United States
In the United States, there are now well-established sports programs for wheelchair users. Among these are
- the basketball league;
- marathon racing;
- rugby championships;
- table tennis events;
- tennis competitions;
- track and field meetings; and
- water skiing.
The related organizations include
- the American Association of Adapted Sports Programs (AAASP), http://www.adaptedsports.org/index.html; and
- Wheelchair Sports USA, http://www.wsusa.org/.
Other international sports meetings
Apart from the Paralympics, a notable gathering is the Annual International
Stoke Mandeville Games jointly run by the International Stoke Mandeville
Wheelchair Sports Federation (ISMWSF) and the International Sports Organization
for the Disabled (ISOD).