About 332 Chinese athletes will take part in the upcoming Beijing Paralympics from Sep. 6-17. The games started torch relay on Friday in Xi'an, capital of northwest Shaanxi Province.
Here are facts and figures about the sports of the disabled people. All data for 2007 unless otherwise stated:
Sports activities: About 594 athletes competed in 39 international sports events such as athletics, swimming, shooting, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair tennis, sitting volleyball, cycling, and wheelchair rugby. They won 339 gold, 172 silver and 147 bronze medals and broke 11 world records.
Sports centers: China had 188 provincial level sports centers and 1,264 city/prefecture centers. The number of registered sports training bases at provincial and city level were 199 and 476 respectively.
Some 838 city level sports and mass sports competitions were organized, with 51,975 participants.
National Games for the Disabled: First Games were held in Hefei, capital of central Anhui Province in 1984. The 7th games were concluded in 2007 in Kunming, capital of Southwest Yunnan Province. Over 3,000 athletes from all localities and HK SAR and Macau SAR took part in the games.
(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2008)