Disability Sports

What are Disability Sports?

Disabled or disability sports are played by persons with a disability, including physical and intellectual disabilities. Many of these are based on existing sports but modified to meet the needs of persons with a disabilities, they are also referred to as adapted sports. However, not all disabled sports are adapted, several sports that have been specifically created for persons with a disability have no equivalent in able-bodied sports.

While sport has value in everyone's life, it is even more important in the life of a person with a disability. This is because of the rehabilitative influence sport can have not only on the physical body but also on rehabilitating people with a disability into society. Furthermore, sport teaches independence. Nowadays, people with a disability participate in high performance as well as in competitive and recreational sport.

The number of people with disabilities involved in sport and physical recreation is steadily increasing around the world with organized sports for athletes with disabilities divided into three main disability groups, sports for the deaf, sports for persons with physical disabilities, and sports for persons with intellectual disabilities.

From the late 1980s, organizations began to include athletes with disabilities in sporting events such as the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games. However, many sports are practiced by persons with a disability outside the formal sports movements, for example: Wheelchair basketball, Wheelchair dancing, Weightlifting, Swimming, and many other sporting activities you can join if you are mentally or physical disabled.

Major disability sporting events include:

Paralympic Games - A multi-sport event for athletes with physical, mental and sensorial disabilities. This includes mobility disabilities, amputees, visual disabilities and those with cerebral palsy. The Paralympic Games are held every four years, following the Olympic Games, and are governed by the International Paralympic Committee.

Deaflympics - The Summer and Winter Deaflympics are among the world's fastest growing sports events.

Special Olympics - The global Special Olympics movement got its start on 20 July 1968, when the First International Special Olympics Games were held at Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois, USA. But the concept of Special Olympics was born much earlier, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver started a day camp for people with intellectual disabilities at her home in 1962.

Disability Commonwealth Games - For the first time in the Games history a number of Para-Sports were included in a fully inclusive Sports Program in Manchester 2002 when 20 countries sent both male and female elite athletes with a disability to compete in 10 events across 5 different Para-Sports; Athletics, Lawn Bowls, Swimming, Table Tennis and Weightlifting. “The Commonwealth has always said it wants to play a lead role in social issues,” says Steadward, who is president of the International paralympic Committee. “What better way than by becoming the first major sports competition to integrate athletes with disabilities?”

Information Regarding Disability Sports

Tokyo 2009 Asian Youth Paralympic Games - As it enters the final stages of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games bidding race, Tokyo 2016 has given an enthusiastic welcome to the start of the Tokyo 2009 Asian Youth Para Games. The event sees around 500 young people with disabilities from across the continent compete over three days of elite competition Japan's dynamic capital city.

Disability Archery and Bowhunting - Sports for All Abilities - Archery is a sport that nearly anyone can pursue, despite the disability they experience. Target archery itself has been a Paralympic sport for greater than thirty years. The Paralympic program includes doubles, singles, and team events which use the same scoring and competition protocols as the Olympic games. The governing body is the Federation Internationale de Tir L'Arc, or the Federation of International Target Archery (FITA).

Embracing Equality in Sports Coaching - Equality is about recognizing and accepting that people are principally different and can not be treated the same in any organization. Nonetheless, everyone deserves the same opportunity to participate and must be treated fairly and given the same chance as anyone else. These principles also apply to sport and leisure.

National Sports Center for the Disabled - The NSCD was founded in January 1970 when Winter Park Resort's ski school director agreed to teach skiing to a group of children with amputations from The Children's Hospital of Denver. Three decades later, the NSCD is widely considered the largest-and most successful-outdoor therapeutic recreation agency in the world.

Sports Provide Outlet for the Disabled - The Paralympics and NSCD are only two of many organizations founded to involve disabled individuals in sports. It's evident, from the success and increasing popularity of these organizations, that both adults and children with disabilities benefit greatly from participating in adaptive sports activities, and that the benefit extends to all aspects of their lives.

Link to "Disability Sports" - http://www.disabled-world.com/sports/