Soon after the closing of the London 2012 Olympic Games, Channel 4 began promoting its Paralympic coverage with the strapline: “Thanks for the warm-up”. It followed up with its biggest ever marketing campaign, “Meet the Superhumans”, that garnered critical acclaim.
The Paralympics were beamed to more than 100 countries, eventually drawing 3.8 billion viewers. At the closing ceremony Lord Coe, president of the London 2012 Organising Committee, said people would never think of disability in the same way again. Research undertaken after the Paralympics revealed that 65% of Britons agreed London delivered a breakthrough in the way people with an impairment are viewed.
Now, on the eve of the Paris 2024 Paralympics, a new exhibition documents the last 70 years of para sport. Paralympic History: From Integration in Sport to Social Inclusion (1948-2024) begins with the early community created through the Stoke Mandeville Games of 1948 – which opened on the same day as the London 1948 Olympic Games, foregrounding the post-war needs of injured soldiers.
This led to the establishment of shared principles and aspirations, culminating in the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960. In the years that followed the Games have become a global brand showcasing boundary-pushing technologies and exceptional human performance.
Visitors encounter a copy of the document that sets out the origin of the International Paralympic Committee in 1989. Also included is the documentation from the Court of Arbitration decision in 2008, which outlines why South African runner Oscar........