Jessica Long is among the most decorated American athletes in the world. The thirty-two-year-old swimmer, who won five medals at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, has a total of twenty-nine. For years, the games have given her the opportunity to swim at the highest level and are an event she looks forward to every four years.
“I have wanted to raise awareness of the Paralympic Games since I was 12 years old, when I won my first Paralympic title in Athens,” says the swimmer, who had her lower limbs amputated as a baby due to a congenital abnormality. “The excitement and anticipation for the Paralympic Games grows every year.”
Participation in the Paralympic Games is at an all-time high. More than 4,400 athletes from around the world are participating in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, which kicked off on 28 August.
But how did the Paralympic Games come about?
Although the Paralympic Games are relatively new compared to the Olympic Games, they have evolved considerably since their inception. Every four years, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) opens the games to more athletes, disabilities and countries, and adds new disciplines to the programme.
Although the first Paralympic Games took place in 1948, athletes with physical disabilities had already been participating in sporting activities for at least sixty years. As early as 1888, deaf athletes had founded their own sports club in Berlin.
But it was not until after World War II that the idea of holding competitions for disabled athletes began to spread, as a way to help wounded veterans and civilians. Ludwig Guttmann, a doctor who ran a center for spinal cord injuries in Britain, spearheaded the movement. He saw participation in sports as a form of mental and physical rehabilitation. Fearing that people with disabilities were too often abandoned, the doctor saw sports as a way to help “reintegrate the paralyzed into society.”
“I discovered that sport had a huge social impact on people with disabilities,” Ludwig Guttmann said in an interview available on the IPC website. “When I saw how accepted sport was by people with disabilities, it seemed obvious to me to start a sports movement.”
