Alle origini delle Paralimpiadi. I "Giochi internazionali per paraplegici" di Roma 1960

In 1960 the International Stoke Mandeville Games for paraplegic athletes, established in 1948, were held in Rome, shortly after the Olympics. In retrospect, the event has been considered as the first edition of the Paralympics. The Games were open only to wheelchair athletes and the level of participation, organization and attention of media was not comparable to that of the present-day Paralympics, also because the competitions for disabled athletes were not considered real sport. Nevertheless, the Games represented an essential stage of the development of paralympic sport and in many countries contributed to accelerate the process of social inclusion of the persons with disabilities. The article tells the story of the Rome Games on the basis of the media at the time, including the audio-visual, and aims at defining which role they had in the evolution of Paralympic sport and how they influenced the more general social condition of the disabled people.