The Paralympics on this website

Expectations are high for the success of the forthcoming Paralympic Games, which will be held in London beginning on the 29th of August 2012. Twenty sports will be represented - from archery and power lifting to athletics and boccia - and over 4000 athletes are expected to compete, from 150 countries.

Until relatively recently, the Paralympic Games were very much the poor relation of their Olympic counterparts; however, the gap in funding, media attention and audience participation and expectation is beginning to narrow significantly, helped by the closer working links between the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. The Beijing 2008 Paralympic games had a worldwide television audience of over 3 billion people.

On this website we have chosen to integrate our coverage of the Paralympics with that of the Olympics, since many aspects of sport research are relevant to both competitions. However, this page brings together, for our users’convenience, links to pages on the website which will be of particular interest to researchers into disability sport. It also provides links to other specific Paralympics content online.

Research articles on the Paralympics: 

The media and the Paralympics

The IPC & the regulatory bodies of disability sport

Creating the Paralympic Games: a bibliography of British Library resources

The IOC & the IPC: evolution of a relationship

Patented sports equipment for the disabled athlete

Media bibliography