| Athletics at the I Paralympic Games | |
|---|---|
 Paralympic Athletics | |
| Competitors | 31 from 10 nations |
Athletics at the 1960 Summer Paralympics consisted of 25 events, 13 for men and 12 for women.
| Athletics at the I Paralympic Games | |
|---|---|
| Paralympic Athletics | |
| Competitors | 31 from 10 nations |
Athletics at the 1960 Summer Paralympics consisted of 25 events, 13 for men and 12 for women.
Australia (3)
Austria (5)
France (1)
Great Britain (3)
Italy (9)
Malta (2)
Netherlands (1)
Switzerland (1)
United States (2)
West Germany (4)| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy (ITA) | 12 | 12 | 8 | 32 |
| 2 | West Germany (FRG) | 5 | 3 | 5 | 13 |
| 3 | Great Britain (GBR) | 4 | 0 | 4 | 8 |
| 4 | United States (USA) | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| 5 | France (FRA) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 6 | Australia (AUS) | 0 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| 7 | Netherlands (NED) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Switzerland (SUI) | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 9 | Austria (AUT) | 0 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| 10 | Malta (MLT) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Totals (10 entries) | 25 | 25 | 25 | 75 | |
The 9th Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games, retroactively designated as the 1960 Summer Paralympics, were the first international Paralympic Games, following on from the Stoke Mandeville Games of 1948 and 1952. They were organised under the aegis of the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation. The term "Paralympic Games" was approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) first in 1984, while the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) was formed in 1989.
The 1964 Summer Paralympics, originally known as the 13th International Stoke Mandeville Games and also known as Paralympic Tokyo 1964, were the second Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Tokyo, Japan, and were the last Summer Paralympics to take place in the same city as the Summer Olympics until the 1988 Summer Paralympics.
The 1976 Summer Paralympics, branded as Torontolympiad – 1976 Olympiad for the Physically Disabled, was the fifth Paralympic Games to be held. They were hosted by Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from 3 to 11 August 1976, marking the first time a Paralympics was held in the Americas and in Canada. The games began three days after the close of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
The 1984 International Games for the Disabled, canonically the 1984 Summer Paralympics, were the seventh Paralympic Games to be held. There were two separate competitions: one in Stoke Mandeville, England, United Kingdom for wheelchair athletes with spinal cord injuries and the other at the Mitchel Athletic Complex and Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, United States for wheelchair and ambulatory athletes with cerebral palsy, amputees, and les autres [the others]. Stoke Mandeville had been the location of the Stoke Mandeville Games from 1948 onwards, seen as the precursors to the Paralympic Games, as the 9th International Stoke Mandeville Games in Rome in 1960 are now recognised as the first Summer Paralympics. As with the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Soviet Union and other communist countries except China, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia boycotted the Paralympic Games. The Soviet Union did not participate in the Paralympics at the time, arguing that they have no disabled people in the country. The USSR made its Paralympic debut in 1988, during Perestroika.
The Summer Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, are an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete. This includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. The Paralympic Games are held every four years, organized by the International Paralympic Committee. Medals are awarded in every event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that the Olympic Games started in 1904.
Athletics has been contested at every Summer Paralympics since the first games in 1960. Men and women from all disability groups compete in the sport.
Malta competed in the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, China from 6 to 17 September 2008. This was the island nation's seventh appearance at a Summer Paralympic Games since their debut in 1960, but their first since the 1984 Summer Paralympics 24 years earlier. Antonio Flores, a runner, was the only athlete to represent Malta at the Games, having qualified via the 2008 British Open Athletics Championships. At the Paralympics, Flores did not qualify for the final of the men's 100 metres T44 event after placing 11th overall in the competition and fifth in his heat during the heat stages; the fastest four participants in his heat advanced to the final.
Athletics at the 1996 Summer Paralympics consisted of 210 events, 155 for men and 55 for women.
Swimming has been contested at every Summer Paralympics. At the first games, the 1960 Paralympics, 62 swimming events were held in distances of 25 and 50 metres, plus a 3×50 metre relay for men. Since then, swimming at the Paralympics has grown to 140 events covering distances from 50 to 400 metres, plus 4×50 and 4×100 metre relays. Along with track and field athletics, it is one of the largest sports at the Paralympics in terms of the number of events, competitors, and spectators.
Australia has participated officially in every Paralympic Games since its inauguration in 1960 except for the 1976 Winter Paralympics.
France competed at the inaugural Summer Paralympic Games in 1960 in Rome. France's six athletes competed in four sports: archery, athletics, dartchery and swimming. All of France's athletes obtained medals in every event they competed in.
Argentina participated in the inaugural Paralympic Games in 1960 in Rome, with a delegation consisting in five swimmers, and has taken part in every edition of the Summer Paralympics since then. The country made its Winter Paralympics début in 2010, with a two-man delegation in alpine skiing.
Norway has participated in every edition of both the Summer and Winter Paralympics, except the second Summer Games in 1964. It was one of the seventeen countries to take part in the inaugural Paralympic Games in 1960 in Rome, where it sent a delegation of eleven athletes. Norway was the host country of both the 1980 Winter Paralympics, in Geilo, and the 1994 Winter Paralympics, in Lillehammer.
Switzerland was one of the seventeen nations that competed at the inaugural Summer Paralympic Games in 1960 held in Rome, Italy, from September 19 to 24, 1960. Preparations for the Games began two years prior in 1958 to stage what was at the time called the 9th Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games. The team finished thirteenth in the medal table with a total of four medals, one gold and three silver. The Swiss team consisted of two athletes: Denis Favre, a man who competed in athletics and swimming events, and Simone Knusli, a woman who competed in swimming.
Para-athletics classification is a system to determine which athletes with disabilities may compete against each other in para-athletics events. Classification is intended to group together athletes with similar levels of physical ability to allow fair competition. Classification was created and is managed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), which is regularly published via its IPC Athletics Classification Handbook. People with physical, vision and intellectual disabilities are eligible to compete in this sport at the Summer Paralympics. The classification for this sport was created during the 1940s and for much of its early history was a medical condition based classification system. The classification system has subsequently become a functional mobility based one, and is moving towards an evidence-based classification system.
The club throw is an athletic throwing event where the objective is to throw a wooden club. The event is one of the four throwing events, along with discus, javelin and shot put of the Summer Paralympics. It is the Paralympic equivalent of the hammer throw. The club throw was introduced for both men and women at the first 1960 Summer Paralympic Games. It was dropped from the women's programme from the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona but was reinstated for London 2012.
Malta competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 7 to 18 September 2016. The country's participation in Rio marked its ninth appearance at the quadrennial event with the exception of the years between 1988 and 2004. The delegation consisted of one short-distance swimmer, Vladyslava Kravchenko, who was announced as the country's representative in April 2016. She was chosen as the flag bearer for the opening ceremony. Kravchenko competed in three swimming events but failed to advance into the final of each event as her times in her respective competitions were not fast enough to qualify for the later stages of each contest.
The 2019 World Para Athletics Championships was a Paralympic track and field event organised by the World Para Athletics subcommittee of the International Paralympic Committee. It was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates from 7 to 15 November 2019. It was the 9th edition of the event, formerly known as the IPC Athletics World Championship prior to 2017.
Athletics at the 2020 Summer Paralympics were held in the National Stadium in Tokyo. There was 167 medal events: 93 for men, 73 for women and one mixed event. It was the largest contest of the Games programme regarding athlete numbers and medal events to be scheduled.
