London 2012 blog

As of yesterday there were only 2012 days - or 287 more Sundays - until the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games.

Hopefully you will know that 'Paralympic' means 'parallel to' or 'running alongside' the Olympic Games - a corruption of 'parallel' and 'Olympic', which of course when disabled sportsmen and women other than paraplegics joined the fray became a nonsense..

The Games in 1960 Rome - which became the first Paralympic Games - were simply a relocation from their traditional annual base near Aylesbury, UK and were more than likely called the 'International Stoke Mandeville Games' (ISMG).

Other names were also used to describe past Games, for example 'Olympics for the Disabled' in 1980. So when was the word 'Paralympic' first officially use to describe the Games with its old paraplegic meaning?

Until last year, wearing my Paralympic/Olympic 'anorak', I thought the earliest use was in 1972 in Heidelberg (the Olymic Games were in Munich that year), when I discovered pictures of the team buses displaying the sign 'Paralympics '72'.

Imagine my suprise when another 'anorak' sent me a picture showing the earliest use as not '72 but as early as 1964 Tokyo!

1964!

The Japanese were obviously (and as usual) well-sensitised to any marketing opportunity. A cigarette company produced a whole series of Olympic covers of which one was clearly designated for the Paralympic Games as we now know them.

We know this was no fluke because if you look at the picture below you will see the 'wheel' of a wheelchair repeated five times (the IOC would probably call that a liberty!) as a bit of artistic licence of the ISMGF symbol which was three wheelchair wheels interlocked.

And so we see how far we have come, when even in those early days of the Paralympic movement people's joint association for these two great events did not require such a huge leap of the imagination.