Wheelchair racing is one of the most exciting disciplines in the
Paralympics. And it's not just a wheel-based equivalent of
Olympic racing: John D. Barrow, mathematician, cosmologist and
prolific popular science writer, has spotted an important
difference: The Brazilian athlete Wendel Silva Soares in a 400m
wheelchair race. Image: Marcello Casal. The first international
sports events for disabled athletes held in conjunction with an
Olympic Games were in Rome in the summer of 1960. The term
Paralympics was only coined four years later at the Tokyo
Olympics. At first, wheelchair athletes used conventional heavy
wheelchairs (7-18kg) and only contested events up to 200 metres.
The first wheelchair-borne marathon competitor competed in the
1975 Boston Marathon. New races were organised and gradually
purpose-built racing chairs appeared. By the 1980s they had
become lightweight (4-10kg) and technically sophisticated. The
first mile completed in under four minutes by a wheelchair
athlete came in 1985 and the roster