Paralympics powers forward

The Paralympics have grown into a huge event

The Paralympics have come a long way from its humble beginnings as a rehabilitation programme for British war veterans with spinal injuries as BBC Sport Online discovers.

Back in 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes of his patients.

He set up a competition with other hospitals to coincide with the London Olympics in that year.

Over the next decade Guttman's care plan was adopted by other spinal injury units in Britain and competition grew.

In 1960, the Olympics were held in Rome, and Guttmann brought 400 wheelchair athletes to the Olympic city to compete. The modern Parallel Olympics (or "Paralympics") were born

First gold

Britain's first ever gold medal was won by Margaret Maughan that year in archery - the first sport to be included in Guttman's treatment plans.

In 1964 the able-bodied athletes went to Tokyo for the Olympics and shortly afterward the Japanese capital also played host to the disabled athletes.

The games in this year saw the introduction of wheelchair racing - although only in the normal day-to-day chairs rather than the space age machines used by the Paralympians of today.

Equestrian was added in 1996

While the Olympics went to Mexico in 1968, the Paralympics were staged in Israel and four years later were held in Heidelberg while the Olympics were in Munich.

They saw more than 1,000 athletes from 44 countries participating and people with quadriplegic spinal injuries competed for the first time while visually impaired athletes took part in demonstration events.

The visually impaired took a full part in medal events in Toronto in 1976. Their participation, along with debuts for amputee and mixed disabilities ("les autres"), athletes boosted the number of competitors to 1600.

Specialised racing wheelchairs were used for the first time.

Political problems

Politics reared its ugly head in 1980 as the Soviet Union could not, or would not, agree to the Paralympics taking place and as a result 2500 disabled athletes from 42 countries went to Arnhem in Holland to compete.

The Paralympic movement invited athletes with cerebral-palsy to compete for the first time.

Four years later Britain and the United States joined forces as hosts with events being held at Stoke Mandeville and New York. The Wheelchair Marathon race was added to the competition for the first time.

Seoul success

The 1980's ended on a high note for the Paralympic movement, with the 1988 games in Seoul.

The Koreans decided that the games should be truly "parallel" and so they were staged on the same scale and lines as the Olympics.

It saw an unprecedented level of co-operation between the organising committees of the Olympics and Paralympics.

The 1992 Barcelona Paralympics took the Games one step further with 3,500 athletes from 82 countries competing in front packed stadia.

Following the Barcelona Games, athletes with learning disabilities had their own Paralympics in Madrid.

The difficult games

Unfortunately a lot of the good work of Barcelona was undone four years later in Atlanta.

The Paralympic Organising Committee received little help from their Olympic counterparts and athletes complained about the facilities in the Olympic Village and about the city's transport system.

The athletes competed in almost empty venues.

However, it was not all bad - Atlanta was the first Paralympic games to benefit from having world-wide sponsors, athletes with learning disabilities were integrated into the main programme, equestrian was added to the list of sports, with sailing and wheelchair rugby being included as demonstration events.

Atlanta 1996 also saw a record number of participating nations and record number of world bests set.

First southern Paralympics

And so to Sydney, the first city in the southern hemisphere to host the Paralympics.

A staggering 132 countries will take part with rugby and wheelchair basketball given full medal status as wil basketball for athletes with learning disabilities.

The Australian love of sport and the country's success in disability sport just heightens the expectation of many people in the Paralympic movement that the first games of the new millennium will be the best ever.

It is all a far cry from the movement's humble beginnings in in Stoke Mandeville.