The Paralympic Games Trivia Quiz

Answer: They run alongside or parallel to the Olympic Games.

The term Paralympic Games came into official use at the 1988 Games in Seoul. Prior to this, such terms as International Games for the Physically Disabled and the Olympiad for the Disabled were used. The Games are sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as are the Special Olympics World Games (for athletes with intellectual disabilities) and the Deaflympics.

Paralympic athletes are classified into six types, namely: amputees (A), cerebral palsy (CP), intellectually disabled (ID), visually impaired (VI), wheelchair (WC) and "les autres" (LA). The last category, French for the others, are those that don't fall into the first five such as those with dwarfism or multiple sclerosis.

Answer: Germany

Ludwig Guttmann was a top Jewish German neurosurgeon who had saved sixty fellow Jews from concentration camps by lying to German officers, claiming they were too sick to leave hospital. After leaving Nazi Germany, he settled in England where he became the director of Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

At a time when paraplegics were usually encased in plaster, isolated and left to die from bedsores and other infections, Guttmann trained and motivated them with sport, often claiming he would make them into taxpayers. Sir Ludwig Guttmann died in 1980 and has a statue outside Stoke Mandeville Hospital in recognition of his achievements.

Answer: Every athlete won a medal.

Since there were no more than three athletes or teams per event, every athlete was guaranteed to win a medal. The home team Italy were top of the medals table, followed by Great Britain and West Germany.

Answer: Tokyo

After Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964, Mexico refused to host the Paralympics in 1968 so they went to Tel Aviv in Israel. The games were held in the same country as the Munich and Montreal Olympics in 1972 and 1976 respectively, but not the same city (Heidelberg and Toronto). Moscow's attitudes were highlighted by an official at the Moscow Olympics who, when asked by a Western journalist if they would participate at the games in Arnhem, the Netherlands, reputedly replied "There are no invalids in the USSR". The LA games of 1984 were accompanied by the Paras of Stoke Mandeville and New York. From Seoul 1988 onwards, the two games have been in the same city.

I must add that the attitudes of Mexico and post-Soviet Russia towards people with disabilities have since softened. For example, at the London 2012 Paralympics, Mexico sent 81 competitors and Russia sent 182.

Answer: Boccia

Boccia is for athletes with cerebral palsy and other severe disabilities involving motor skills. It is a bowling game with blue or red balls aimed at a white jack. Athletes who are too severely disabled to propel the balls with their hands and feet use ramps.

Goalball and 5-a-side football both use balls containing noise bells and competitors wear eyeshades and eyepatches so that both blind and partially sighted people can compete equally. Blind judo is much the same as judo except that both competitors start with a loose grip on each other's judo suits and "Matte" meaning wait or stop is shouted if contact is broken.

Answer: Fencing

In 1988, Pál Szekeres won an Olympic bronze in the team foil event in fencing. After a competition in Germany in 1991, he was involved in a bus crash and suffered spinal injuries. He went on to win a Paralympic gold in wheelchair fencing the following year and won a further two gold medals and three bronzes.

Answer: Yellow and black

The three agitos (from the Latin for "I move") of red, blue and green, encircling a common centre represent athletes coming from all over the globe and also the Olympic motto "spirit in motion". This symbol has been used at the games since 2003. Other Paralympic symbols are the mascots such as Lizzie, the Sydney lizard, Fu Niu Lele, the multi-coloured cow in Beijing and Mandeville, the London mascot named in honour of the English hospital that hosted the precursor to the games.

Answer: S11

In many paralympic sports there are categories so that those with comparable disabilities compete in the same events. The letters at the start indicate the sport, so that T and F are track and field athletics respectively, C is cycling and S is swimming. Swimmers with physical disabilties run from S1 (most severe) to S10 (least severe), S11 to S13 are those with visual impairment and S14 is for intellectual disability.

Tappers are assistants who tap blind and visually impaired swimmers on the head with a long stick, with a ball at the end, to let them know the wall is approaching.

The many Paralympic assistants also include guides who hold onto blind runners and let blind jumpers know the board is coming. There are also numerous technicians on hand to repair running blades and sports wheelchairs.

Answer: Yes

This quiz has concentrated on the Summer Paralymics, but the first Winter Paralympics took place in 1976 at Örnsköldsvik in Sweden. The games has included Alpine Skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ice sledge hockey (played on specially adapted sledges) and wheelchair curling. Albertville, 1992, was the first Winter Paralympics to use the same facilities as the year's Winter Olympics.

Answer: Canada

As it happens, the gold for the 2004 wheelchair rugby went neither to Canada, who invented the game, nor to the USA, but to New Zealand. The documentary is an example of the increased profile of the Games over the years. With many countries already showing hours of live Paralympic coverage, the IPC made the sport available to even more people in 2012 by webcasting over 750 hours of coverage on its Youtube channel.