Para-athletics

The athletics events within the parasport are mostly the same as those available to able-bodied people, with two major exceptions in wheelchair racing and the club throw, which are specific to the division.

[2] The Raza point score system can be used in field events to allow athletes of different abilities to directly compete.

International governance operates outside of the sport's able-bodied governing body World Athletics (until 2019: IAAF) and instead is divided among those categories, with deaf athletics overseen by the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (CISS),[3] para-athletics for the physical disabled principally governed by the World Para Athletics subcommittee of the IPC,[4] and para-athletics for the intellectually disabled through the International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability (INAS).

'Paralympic' was originally a portmanteau of Olympic and paraplegic, reflecting the roots of the movement among spinal injury patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital under Sir Ludwig Guttmann, but as the Paralympic Games gained popularity and prestige, and importantly, expanded to other non-spinal classes such as cerebral palsy, vision impairment and running with prosthetics, the reasoning behind the para part of the name was changed to emphasise that the Games and the Movement were parallel (and thus equal) to the Olympics.

The main stand-alone championships of the sport are now referred to as the World Para-Athletics Championships - itself mirroring the change in the able-bodied events when the IAAF change its branding to World Athletics.Competitors at elite level competitions are classified by disability, to arrange athletes with a similar disability in the same event.

Most major marathons have wheelchair divisions and the elite racers consistently beat the runners on foot.