Paralympic Games, major international sports competition for athletes with disabilities. Comparable to the Olympic Games, the Paralympics are split into Winter Games and Summer Games, which alternately occur every two years.

About the Organization More than 1,000 people with intellectual disabilities participated. The first Special Olympics Winter Games were held in 1977. Athletes have the opportunity of competing in 32 Olympics-type sports. Special Olympics is one of only two organizations authorized to use the name “Olympics.”

Olympic Games - Summer, Winter Olympics, YOG & Paralympics.

With more than six million athletes and Unified Sports partners and one million coaches and volunteers in over 200 accredited Programs, Special Olympics delivers more than 30 Olympic-type sports and over 100,000 games and competitions every year.

It all began in the 1950s and early 1960s, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver saw how unjustly and unfairly people with intellectual disabilities were treated. She also saw that many children with intellectual disabilities didn't even have a place to play. She decided to take action.

NBC Universal, Inc. The International Olympic Committee announced it has accepted a proposal by local organizers of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles to add baseball/softball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash to the event's sports program.

The Olympics include the summer games, winter games, and Paralympic Games. Each type of games is held every four years, with the winter and summer games held two years apart from each other.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver saw the adjective "special" as a way to define the unique gifts of adults and children with intellectual disabilities. Starting with the very first Special Olympics International Games in 1968, she wanted to dwell on our athletes' abilities, not disabilities.

We are wired to love drama Most sports are competitive, and interest in competition is common in our appreciation of sports. We see the outcome of a sports competition as meaningful, partly because it demonstrates a status change - one person or team besting another - that our minds find important.

Eunice Kennedy ShriverSpecial Olympics / Founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics, was a pioneer in the worldwide struggle for rights and acceptance for people with intellectual disabilities.

In addition to men's and women's dual moguls, the 2026 Winter Games will include mixed team skeleton, women's doubles luge, women's large hill ski jumping and three events in the new sport of ski mountaineering: men's sprint, women's sprint and mixed relay.

Cricket, flag football, squash, lacrosse and baseball and softball will all be added to the L.A. Olympics, giving the 2028 Games a distinctly different look from recent Summer Olympics.