Paralympic Swimming

600 Athletes fight for 148 gold medals

Swimming was one of the first sports to become part of the Paralympic games. It made its debut in the 1960 Paralympic games and has gained considerable popularity since then. Today there are more than 80 countries represented in the Paralympic swimming programme.

As competitors with both physical disability and those who are visually impaired are able to take part, this makes swimming one of the only Paralympic sports accessible to all. As with able-bodied competitors, there are events in all of the four main strokes, i.e. backstroke, freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke. In terms of layout the pool is identical to the main Olympic games with a 50 metre pool being divided into 10 separate lanes with the middle eight having swimmers in them.

In order to ensure equality, competitors are split into classes depending on their functional ability with regards to each stroke. Physically disabled competitors are graded 1 to 10, with 1 being the most disabled and 10 being the least; classes 11, 12 and 13 are reserved for those who are visually impaired.

Swimmers only compete against others in the same classification and medals are awarded for all 13 classes. Those competitors in the visually impaired classes are able to use an assistant to tell them when they are reaching the edge of the pool.

Swimming remains one of the most popular sports in the Paralympic games, with over 500 swimmers having taken part in 2000 Sydney Paralympics.