| Australia at the 1960 Summer Paralympics | |
|---|---|
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| IPC code | AUS |
| NPC | Australian Paralympic Committee |
| Website | www |
| in Rome | |
| Medals |
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| Summer Paralympics appearances (overview) | |
| Australia at the 1960 Summer Paralympics | |
|---|---|
| | |
| IPC code | AUS |
| NPC | Australian Paralympic Committee |
| Website | www |
| in Rome | |
| Medals |
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| Summer Paralympics appearances (overview) | |
The competition was at the time terrific. But when you think of what they do today, it wasn't the same. You had to be in more than one sport to participate in the Games. It was so different than today where athletes focus on one sport.
Contents
Daphne Hilton, athlete [1]
The 1960 Summer Paralympic Games held in Rome, Italy were the first Paralympic Games. The organizers viewed the event as a chance to help athletes rehabilitate: The primary purpose was not competition. The Australians who were involved as support staff and organizers were mostly medical and medical support personnel. [2] There were no Australian competitors who were blind or amputees because they were not allowed to compete in these games and would not be allowed to compete until the 1976 Summer Paralympics. [3]
At the first Paralympic Games, athletes were required to compete in multiple sports. For Australian athletes, the trip to the games was the first time they had traveled internationally. The Australian team had a team doctor, who frequently doubled as the team manager. Most Australian athletes traveled with only one wheelchair, in which they competed in multiple sports. The wheelchair they used in the Paralympics was the one that they used for their everyday life. [3]
The Olympic Village was not designed with disabled athletes in mind. Housing was built on stilts, with steep stairs leading up to many entrances. These stairs were covered with ramps, but Australian and other athletes found the ramps to be so steep that they could not get into a building without the assistance of one or two people pushing them up. [1]
Australia won 3 gold, 6 silver and 1 bronze medals in four sports and finished 7th overall behind Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, USA and Norway [4]
The Australian contingent were going into the games with no prior information on the other competing countries and were written to be apprehensive in relation to commencing the games as they had no indication of the abilities of their competitors.
The aim of these games from an Australian and world sporting perspective were undertaken as a concept to witness how the idea of a Paralympic Games would be accepted and how it would run as a new international meet. The Games for Australia specifically were used to better their knowledge over the information regarding the specialized equipment improvements they could make after comparing their own to those of the other countries.
The Australian team succeeded well beyond their original expectations by attaining the level of success in medal numbers they achieved.
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*The medals had on the back of them separate engravings of the event competed in. The morning before the closing ceremony saw that Pope John XXIII was in attendance and gave an address to the entire Paralympic competitive assembly.
| Rank | NPC | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | 29 | 29 | 24 | 82 |
| 2 | Great Britain | 21 | 14 | 19 | 54 |
| 3 | Fed. Rep. Germany | 15 | 6 | 9 | 30 |
| 4 | Austria | 11 | 8 | 11 | 30 |
| 5 | United States | 11 | 7 | 7 | 25 |
| 6 | Norway | 9 | 3 | 4 | 16 |
| Number of Countries winning a medal | 17 | ||||
| % of participating countries winning a medal | 81 | ||||
The games had no bids made to host the Paralympics and as Rome was selected in June 1955 to host the Olympic Games, the Paralympics were decided to follow. The Italian Instituto per l’Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro (INAIL) assisted with accommodating the Australian team during the time of the games. These games were crucial as the success of them meant the potential for the Paralympic games to be run in conjunction with every Olympic Games. This expanding concept would run in the same year and the same city only a few weeks after the Olympic Games.
Acqua Acetosa was the requested sporting facility that Dr Ludwig Guttmann, Joan Scruton and Charlie Atkinson had personally reviewed to utilize after traveling to Rome to inspect the stadium. This was not to be however as several of the required facilities within the stadium including the lifts and access areas were nonoperational so the grounds were unsuitable. A change had to be made to the grounds that had to be used; this stadium was the Tre Fontane Sports Ground. In addition the original accommodation was not built for para athletes which made accessibility incredibly difficult.
There were no noted mascots for these games however the logo used was the same that had been created for the Stoke Mandeville Games.
The opening ceremony took place on 18 September in the Acqua Acetose sports ground at 5:00 pm. The ceremonies began with a parade of the competing nation's starting with the British teams, as the originators of the Paralympic games, followed by other nations in alphabetical order. Given Rome was the host city the Italian teams were the last to enter the sports ground. When all the teams were lined up they were then inspected by Camillo Giardino (Italian Minister for Health), Cesare Merzagora (President of the Italian Senate) and Dr Guttmann. After an opening speech by the President of INAIL, Renato Morelli, the games were officially declared open by Professor Giardina. [5]
The closing ceremony took place on 25 September in the Palazzo dello Sport at 9:00 pm. Proceedings took place in the presence of the Patron of the Games, Donna Carla Gronchi, the wife of the Italian Prime Minister. Donna Carla presented some trophies to athletes before Dr Guttmann gave a speech thanking the Italian organizers of the games. He then awarded INAIL a banner of the Stoke Mandeville Games, the highest honor that the Stoke Mandeville Committee could bestow. The President of INAIL, Signor Morelli, then gave the closing speech with Donna Carla Gronchi declaring the first Paralympic games officially closed. [5]
Different disabilities impact on functional ability to varying degrees. Almost always this impact is one that leads to a competitive disadvantage in sport, hence the differentiation between the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Athletes with different impairments are impacted in different ways but so too are athletes with same or similar disabilities. Two athletes who present with the same type and level of disability may have two different levels of functional ability. It is therefore necessary to classify athletes according to a set of criteria. Athletes are only allowed to compete with those of a similar classification to allow for a more fair and balanced competition. Use of a disability classification system can be thought of in a similar vein as to having weight classes for particular sports or not allowing men and women to compete together in certain sports, so as to provide a more even playing field. [6]
In the modern Olympic games these decisions of who can compete against who is made by a panel of classifiers using two different types of classification systems; a general classification system where the type as well as the degree of impairment is classified and a sport specific or functional classification system where athletes are classified according to their functional ability to carry out specific skills within their competing sport(s). Different sports use either one or both systems in order to classify competing athletes. Generally speaking functional classification is primarily used for physical impairments and general classification for visually or intellectually impaired athletes. [6] During the 1960 Summer Paralympics the only disability groups competing were those with spinal cord injuries or poliomyelitis. Classification was based on a medical examination to determine if the athlete was a complete or incomplete paraplegic or tetraplegic. The competitors with poliomyelitis were further classified as they often were incomplete and had varying levels of sensation in paralyzed limbs. Because of this they were allocated points to differentiate between different levels of sensation and therefore functional ability. [7]
Some of the Australian team were unhappy with the officiating efforts by the representatives of the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) as the Australian's felt that they were being unfairly dealt with. Specific instances and primary accounts have stated that the actions the athletes made were disciplined differently than that compared to when the European country participants did the same things.
Australia had 12 athletes competing at the 1960 Summer Paralympics [ citation needed ]
- Daphne Ceeney
- Gary Hooper
- Robin Tourrier
- Kevin Coombs
- Frank Ponta
- Ross Sutton
- Bruno Moretti
- Christopher O'Brien [8]
- Kevin Cunningham
- Bill Mather-Brown
- Roger Cockerill
- John Turich
The team officials were;
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Rhodesia, Sweden, Switzerland, United States and Yugoslavia. [5]
| Archery | Name | State |
| Men | Frank Ponta Robin Tourrier [10] | WA NSW QLD |
| Women | Daphne Ceeney (now Hilton), NSW | NSW |
| Athletics | Name | State |
|---|---|---|
| Men | Frank Ponta | WA NSW |
| Women | Daphne Ceeney | NSW |
| Swimming | State | |
|---|---|---|
| Men | There were no male competitors at these games | NIL |
| Women | Daphne Ceeney | NSW |
| Table Tennis | Name | State |
|---|---|---|
| Men | Bruno Moretti, Bill Mather-Brown | VIC WA |
| Women | There were no female competitors at these games. | NIL |
| Wheelchair Basketball | Name | State |
|---|---|---|
| Men | John Turich (Team Captain) | WA WA VIC WA WA NSW WA VIC WA |
| Women | There were no female competitors at these games. | NIL |
| Wheelchair Fencing | Name | State |
|---|---|---|
| Men | Frank Ponta, Kevin Cunningham | WA WA |
| Women | There were no female competitors at these games. | N/A |
Boys, I can't really waste Australian funds. You know the public subscribed money so we could come over for a reason. I think we should just go around and look at Rome and some of the villages on the outskirts.
David Cheshire, Manager, [14]
It was a really big effort because they [the medical team] didn't know how we were going to travel - we didn't know how we were going to travel either.
Kevin Coombs, athlete [1]
The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power, impaired passive range of movement, limb deficiency, leg length difference, short stature, hypertonia, ataxia, athetosis, vision impairment and intellectual impairment. There are Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, are held almost immediately following the respective Olympic Games. All Paralympic Games are governed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
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 International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports (IWAS) World Games are a multi-sport competition for athletes with a disability, which were the forerunner of the Paralympic Games. The competition has been formerly known as the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games, the World Wheelchair Games, the International Stoke Mandeville Games, the Stoke Mandeville Games (SMG), and in the 1960s and 1970s was often referred to as the Wheelchair Olympics.
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.
Wheelchair basketball is basketball played by people with varying physical disabilities that disqualify them from playing a non-disabled sport. These include spina bifida, birth defects, cerebral palsy, paralysis due to accident, amputations, and many other disabilities. The International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) is the governing body for this sport. It is recognized by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) as the sole competent authority in wheelchair basketball worldwide. FIBA has recognized IWBF under Article 53 of its General Statutes.
WheelPower is the national organisation for wheelchair sports in the United Kingdom, and aims to help people with disabilities improve their quality of life.
Wheelchair racing is the racing of wheelchairs in track and road races. Wheelchair racing is open to athletes with any qualifying type of disability, amputees, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and partially sighted. Athletes are classified in accordance with the nature and severity of their disability or combinations of disabilities. Like running, it can take place on a track or as a road race. The main competitions take place at the Summer Paralympics which wheelchair racing and athletics has been a part of since 1960. Competitors compete in specialized wheelchairs which allow the athletes to reach speeds of 30 km/h (18.6 mph) or more. It is one of the most prominent forms of Paralympic athletics.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has participated in every summer and winter Paralympic Games.
The 1968 Summer Paralympics was an international multi-sport event held in Tel Aviv, Israel, from November 4 to 13, 1968, in which athletes with physical disabilities competed against one another. The Paralympics are run in parallel with the Olympic Games; these Games were originally planned to be held alongside the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, but two years prior to the event the Mexican government pulled out due to technical difficulties. At the time, the event was known as the 17th International Stoke Mandeville Games. The Stoke Mandeville Games were a forerunner to the Paralympics first organized by Sir Ludwig Guttmann in 1948. This medal table ranks the competing National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) by the number of gold medals won by their athletes.
Australia competed at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Games significantly expanded in 1968 when compared to previous years, as did the Australian team and the events included in the Games. Mexico City were originally to host the 1968 Paralympics, however, they were moved to Tel Aviv in Israel.
Argentina 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, 1968. 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 tenth in the medal table with a total of six medals, two gold, three silver and one bronze. The Argentinian team consisted of five athletes, one man and four women.
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.
Australia sent a team to compete at the 1972 Summer Paralympics in Heidelberg, West Germany. Australian won 25 medals - 6 gold, 9 silver and 10 bronze medals in six sports. Australia finished 11th on the gold medal table and 9th on the total medal table.
Also known as the 13th Stoke Mandeville Games, the 1964 Summer Paralympics was the 2nd Paralympic Games. Hosted in Tokyo, the games ran from 8 to 12 November. Australia won a total of 30 medals and finished fourth on the medal tally behind Italy (3rd), Great Britain (2nd) and the United States (1st). Australia competed in 6 of the 9 sports at the Games, winning medals in each of those sports, but was most successful in the pool, winning a majority of their medals in swimming events.
Following the success of the first ever 1976 Winter Paralympics in Örnsköldsvik four years earlier, Norway was selected to host the Paralympic Games in 1980.
The 13th International Stoke Mandeville Games, later known as the 1964 Summer Paralympics, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan, from November 3 to 12, 1964, in which paraplegic and tetraplegic athletes competed against one another. The Stoke Mandeville Games were a forerunner to the Paralympics first organized by Sir Ludwig Guttmann in 1948. This medal table ranks the competing National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) by the number of gold medals won by their athletes.
Kevin Francis Betts, OAM was a sports administrator known for his work in the Paralympic movement in Australia and his founding work related to wheelchair sports in New South Wales.
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.
Para-Nordic skiing classification is the classification system for para-Nordic skiing which includes the biathlon and cross-country events. The classifications for Para-Nordic skiing mirrors the classifications for Para-Alpine skiing with some exceptions. A functional mobility and medical classification is in use, with skiers being divided into three groups: standing skiers, sit skiers and visually impaired skiers. International classification is governed by International Paralympic Committee, Nordic Skiing (IPC-NS). Other classification is handled by national bodies. Before the IPC-NS took over classification, a number of organizations handled classification based on the type of disability.
Wheelchair sport classification is a system designed to allow fair competition between people of different disabilities, and minimize the impact of a person's specific disability on the outcome of a competition. Wheelchair sports is associated with spinal cord injuries, and includes a number of different types of disabilities including paraplegia, quadriplegia, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome and spina bifida. The disability must meet minimal body function impairment requirements. Wheelchair sport and sport for people with spinal cord injuries is often based on the location of lesions on the spinal cord and their association with physical disability and functionality.
Several oral histories are available online from Australian athletes who competed at the Games.
Reflections by team members
Images
