HISTORY

Sporting events of athletes with intellectual disabilities are organized by the International Sports Federation for People with an Intellectual Disability (INAS-FID), founded in 1986. The INAS-FID is a founding member of the International Paralympic Committee, the liaison organization of the paralympic movement and the organizer of the Summer and Winter Paralympics. The INAS-FID is an association of 87 countries from five regions: 31 European countries, 16 Northern and Southern American countries, 14 Asian members, 10 Northern African and Middle Eastern countries, and 16 African members.

The Czech Sports Association for Mentally Handicapped (CSAMH), a member of the Union of Athletes with Disabilities and the Czech Paralympic Committee, was founded in 1992. It has 3,672 members from 40 sports clubs in the Czech Republic. The SCAMH organized twelve Czech championships in 2008 in athletics, basketball, cycling, floorball, football and five-a-side football, skiing, football tennis, swimming, cross country running, table tennis and tennis.

Athletes with intellectual disabilities, namely swimmers and track and field athletes, took part in the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta for the first time. Since 2001, after the Sydney Paralympics, athletes with intellectual disabilities have been banned from all IPC-organized competitions, incl. the Paralympics. The ban was motivated by the inclusion of a non-handicapped journalist in the Spanish basketball team, admitted in a series of articles published after the Paralympics.