MUSIC & SPORT THE PARALYMPIC GAMES WARM-UP SPEAKING PAIR WORK Sapete se esistono sport che non sono presenti ai Giochi Paralimpici? E invece sport che sono solo presenti alle Paralimpiadi? Fate una ricerca su internet e raccogliete informazioni e brevi video. ☐ The Paralympic Games or Paralympics is a periodic series of international multi-sport events involving athletes with physical disabilities organised in parallel with the Olympic Games. They are held by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and are both summer and winter games: the summer games include 22 sports (some of them are sitting volleyball, wheelchair rugby and basketball), the winter games include six sports, such as alpine skiing, super G, and slalom. 1. ☐ There is a special team sport which is only played in the Paralympic games: goalball . Goalball is for blind athletes and consists of a ball with a bell inside that must be thrown or rolled beyond the opponents' goal line. Each team is composed of three players. It's an indoor sport usually played on a volleyball court and the match consists of two halves of twelve minutes. 2. ☐ The first official Paralympic Games took place in Rome in the summer of 1960 with 400 athletes from 23 countries. Since then, the Paralympic Games have taken place in the same year as the Olympic Games. Since the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the Paralympics have taken place immediately after the Olympic Games. The first Winter Paralympic Games took place in Sweden in 1976. 3. ☐ In 1948, the director of the Mandeville Hospital in London, Dr Guttman, had the idea to organise a special sports competition for some of the British World War II veteran patients of the hospital with spinal cord injuries . The event was called the "1948 International Wheelchair Games" and started on the day of the opening of the summer Olympics in London. 4. ☐ The Paralympic games remind the world that people with disabilities have the right to participate in sports at all levels, competitively or not. According to the International Paralympic Committee, these games focus on the values of courage, determination, inspiration, and above all, equality. 5. ☐ The motto for the Paralympic movement is "Spirit in Motion". The Paralympic anthem is "Hymne de l'Avenir", or "Anthem of the Future" (March 1996). The symbol on the Paralympic flag contains three colours: red, blue, and green because they are the colours which most frequently appear on the flags of all nations. 6. GLOSSARY : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : anthem inno to award premiare beyond oltre blind cieco to defy sfidare dwarfism nanismo to involve coinvolgere forerunner precursore goalball pallatere half mezzo injury ferita palsy paralisi wheelchair sedia a rotelle to remind ricordare spinal cord colonna vertebrale to throw gettare