Wheelchair rugby at the 2012 Summer Paralympics
| Wheelchair rugby at the XIV Paralympic Games |
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| Venue | Basketball Arena | ||||||||||||
| Dates | 5 – 9 September 2012 | ||||||||||||
| Competitors | 96 (8 teams) | ||||||||||||
| Medalists | |||||||||||||
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Australia |
 Australia
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Canada |
 Canada
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United States |
 United States
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| Qualified for the semifinals | |
| Eliminated |
| Qualified for the semifinals | |
| Eliminated |
Wheelchair rugby at the 2012 Summer Paralympics was held in the Basketball Arena, London from 5 September to 9 September. There was one event where 8 teams competed. Though technically a mixed gender event the vast majority of competitors at the games were male.
1977: Wheelchair rugby was invented by a group of tetraplegic athletes in 1977 in Winnipeg, Canada as an alternative to wheelchair basketball. They desired a sport that allowed athletes with both arm and leg function to participate equally.
1979: As wheelchair rugby grew in popularity throughout Canada, it made its first appearance outside of Canada as a demonstration sport at Southwest State University in Minnesota, USA. The first Canadian National Championship was held in the same year.
1981: First USA representative team was formed.
1982: First international tournament that brought together various teams from the USA and Canada was held. From this point on, other local and national tournaments took place in various countries.
1989: Great Britain became the first team outside of the continent to compete against Canada and USA in a tournament in Toronto, Canada.
1990: Wheelchair Rugby appeared at the World Wheelchair Games in Stoke Mandeville, Great Britain as an exhibition event, which generated further interest, growth and popularity in the sport internationally. Seven countries competed in this event.
1993: Fifteen countries were competing in wheelchair rugby, and it was recognised as an internationally official sport for athletes with impairments.
1994: Wheelchair Rugby was first officially recognised by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
1995: The first Wheelchair Rugby World Championships were held in Nottwill, Switzerland, with eight teams competing.
1996: Wheelchair rugby was included as a demonstration sport in the Atlanta Paralympic Games, with six teams competing.
1998: As the sport continued to develop, Toronto hosted the second IWRF Wheelchair Rugby World Championship, with 12 countries competing.
2000: Wheelchair rugby was first included in the Paralympic programme at the Sydney Olympics.
The USA won Paralympic golds in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics and the Beijing 2008 Paralympics; New Zealand took the title in the Athens 2004 Paralympics; and Australia won in London 2012. Currently, there are more than 40 countries that actively participate in the sport or who are developing programmes within their nation.
Paralympic sport exists so that athletes with a disability have equal opportunities to compete and be successful in sport. The purpose of classification is to ensure fair and equitable competition at all levels of sport and to allow athletes to compete at the highest level, regardless of individual differences in physical function. Originally, classification systems were based on medical diagnoses rather than each athlete’s functional capacity. However more recent systems of classification are based on the athlete’s functional capacity to perform specific movements unique to each sport. This ensures that strategies and skills of the athletes competing in the sport are the deciding factors of success, rather than the discrepancies in various impairments. Each Paralympic sport has a different classification system.
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