The World Abilitysport Games (known as the IWAS World Games before 2023) are a

parasports Parasports are sports played by people with a disability, including physical and intellectual disabilities. Some parasports are forms of adapted physical activities from existing non-disabled sports, while others have been specifically created f ...

multi-sport event A multi-sport event is an organized sporting event, often held over multiple days, featuring competition in many different sports among organized teams of athletes from (mostly) nation-states. The first major, modern, multi-sport event of intern ...

for athletes who use wheelchairs or are amputees. Organized by World Abilitysport (formerly IWAS), the Games are a successor to the original Stoke Mandeville Games founded in 1948 by

Ludwig Guttmann Sir Ludwig Guttmann (3 July 1899 – 18 March 1980) was a German-British neurologist who established the Stoke Mandeville Games, the sporting event for people with disabilities (PWD) that evolved in England into the Paralympic Games. A Jewish ...

, and specifically the International Stoke Mandeville Games—the first international sporting competition for athletes with disabilities which was held in 1952, itself an Olympic year, between British and Dutch athletes and which ultimately was the forerunner to the modern

Paralympic Games The Paralympic Games or Paralympics is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of disability, disabilities. There are Winter Paralympic Games, Winter and Summer Paralympic Games, which since the 1988 ...

. The

1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Janu ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...

1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...

, and

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...

editions of the International Stoke Mandeville Games were held in the same host country as the

Summer Olympics The Summer Olympic Games, also known as the Summer Olympics or the Games of the Olympiad, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inaugural Games took place in 1896 in Athens, then part of the King ...

; they were retroactively recognized by the

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; , CIO) is the international, non-governmental, sports governing body of the modern Olympic Games. Founded in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas, it is based i ...

as the first four

Summer Paralympic Games The Summer Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, are an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete. This includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebr ...

. The event continued to be held annually, as simply the International Stoke Mandeville Games, in between Paralympic years. After the Paralympics expanded to include events for disability classifications other than wheelchairs, the ISMG for wheelchair athletes continued to be hosted annually in Stoke Mandeville, and later other countries, in all non-Paralympic years. In 2024 the previous IWAS merged with the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CPISRA) to form World Abilitysport and the ''IWAS World Games'' were once more renamed World Abilitysport Games accordingly. A separate event to be known as the Guttmann Games for events and disciplines not yet on the Paralympic Game schedules, organised by World Abilitysport, has been planned for 2024.

History

The event was first established in 1948 as the Stoke Mandeville Games by neurologist

, who organized a sporting competition involving

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

veterans with

spinal cord injuries A spinal cord injury (SCI) is damage to the spinal cord that causes temporary or permanent changes in its function. It is a destructive neurological and pathological state that causes major motor, sensory and autonomic dysfunctions. Symptoms of ...

at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital rehabilitation facility in

Aylesbury Aylesbury ( ) is the county town of Buckinghamshire, England. It is home to the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery and the Aylesbury Waterside Theatre, Waterside Theatre. It is located in central Buckinghamshire, midway between High Wycombe and Milt ...

, England, taking place concurrently with the first post-war

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international Olympic sports, sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a Multi-s ...

in London. In 1952, the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

joined in the event, creating the first international sports competition for athletes with a disability, after which it was renamed the International Stoke Mandeville Games. In

and subsequent Olympic years, the ISMG began to increasingly be hosted in the same country (if not the same host city) as their respective Olympics, with all other editions remaining in Stoke Mandeville. The Games were also increasingly referred to as "Paralympics", originally in reference to

paraplegia Paraplegia, or paraparesis, is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek () "half-stricken". It is usually caused by spinal cord injury or a congenital condition that affects the neura ...

, but later officially referring to an event operating in parallel with the Olympic movement. While the Paralympic Games expanded to include athletes from all disability groups beginning in 1976, the Stoke Mandeville Games continued to be organized as a multi-sport event for wheelchair athletes in non-Paralympic years. Games were held annually in Aylesbury under the direction of the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation (ISMGF), which later became the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation (ISMWSF). In 2003, the Games were combined with a competition for

amputee Amputation is the removal of a limb or other body part by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is ...

athletes organized by the International Sports Organization for the Disabled (ISOD). In 2004, ISMWSF and ISOD merged to create the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS). The Games were subsequently renamed the "World Wheelchair and Amputee Games" in 2005, and later renamed to simply the "IWAS World Games". In 2024, IWAS merged with the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CPISRA) to form World Abilitysport.

Games by year

The inaugural competition, initially named "Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralyzed" in 1948, was just named "Stoke Mandeville Games" the next year, before becoming the "International Stoke Mandeville Games" (ISMG) in 1952. Beginning in 1960 during Summer Olympic years, the ISMG were held in the same host city as the Summer Olympics. These particular editions of the Games were retroactively recognised as being the first four

. The Games were otherwise hosted in Stoke Mandeville in all other years. Beginning in 1976, the Paralympic Games began hosting events for amputees and the visually impaired; at this point, the Paralympics were no longer credited as being editions of the ISMG, but the ISMG went on hiatus during Paralympic years.

IWAS Under 23 World Games (IWAS Junior World Games)

For some years now, the IWAS Federation has hosted junior competitions, which were named ''IWAS World Junior Games'' by 2015. Since 2016 they are called ''IWAS Under 23 World Games'' and will only be played in years with even numbers. * http://www.iwasf.com/iwasf/index.cfm/games/iwas-world-junior-games1111/past-games111/

World Abilitysport Guttmann Games

In 2024, World Abilitysport announced its inaugural World Abilitysport Guttmann Games. Named after the founder of the Stoke Mandeville Games, the event will take place in Stoke Mandeville in July 2024, and feature competition in sports not on the Paralympic programme. It is scheduled to feature para dance sport and power hockey competitions, as well as wheelchair cricket as a

demonstration sport A demonstration sport, or exhibition sport, is a sport which is played to promote it, rather than as part of standard medal competition. This occurs commonly during the Olympic Games but may also occur at other sporting events. Demonstration sport ...

. The event will be broadly analogous to the World Games, a similar multi-sport event for non-Olympic sports and disciplines.

References

External links