Singapore Disability Sports Council

In this section...

• What is Disability Sports?
• Benefits of Disability Sports
• Types of Disability Sports
• Types of Disabilities
• Disability Sports Classification
• Sports Partnership Promotion Grant (SPPG)
• Interest Sports Group (ISG) Grant

What is Disability Sports?

In general, disability sports are opportunities given to persons with physical, sensory and learning impairments to play sports or engage in physical activities both competitive and recreationally.

The aspirations of an athlete with a disability are similar to any other sporting person. The athlete aims to achieve a level of physical and psychological fitness for the chosen sport and demonstrate that ability in competition. The self discipline, positive effect on self-esteem and body image, and friendship are integral components of sporting.

The athlete will generally choose a sport based on his or her abilities. This may be in open able-bodied competitions or in competitions modified for people with similar disabilities. The emphasis is on the ability for a sport, not the disability.

How it all began

Historically, the first record of disabled people participating in sports was in the Napoleonic Wars when a team of one-armed patients of Greenwich Hospital played a team of one-legged patients at crickets.

The oldest continuing sports association for athletes with disabilities is the deaf sport association established in 1924. The credit for the formation of the modern sporting movement for people with disabilities goes to the neurosurgeon Ludwig Guttman who founded the Stoke Mandeville Spinal Injuries Unit in England in 1944. He promoted the therapeutic benefit of sport with the benefits for physical social and psychological rehabilitation following spinal cord injury. He established the first Stoke Mandeville Games which subsequently developed into an international event contributing to the formation of the Paralympic movement. Hans Linstrom contributed to the formation of the winter Olympics which was first held in Sweden in 1974.

The Special Olympic movement has developed separately as an event for people with more severe intellectual disability. Athletes with intellectual disability will be integrated within Paralympic competition in Sydney in 2000.

The World Games for deaf are conducted every four years (Summer Games 1997, 2001, Winter Games 1999, 2003).

References

• Shephard RJ. (School of Physical and Health Education, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada)
• United Spinal Association Recreation, New York – www.unitedspinal.org