The Ascent to Respectability: The Distant History of the Paralympics.

The article focuses on the history of sports for the handicapped and discusses the creation of the Paralympics, an international sporting event for people with disabilities organized in parallel with the Olympic Games. The author explains that sports for people who were handicapped probably began in Great Britain as a joke for aristocratic sponsors and for the monetary gain of betting, discusses the history of handicapped participants in the sports of cricket and chess, and explores the success of the Paralympics at the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China and the 2012 Olympic games in London, England.