| Switzerland at the Paralympic Games | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||
|
At the 1960 Summer Paralympics in Rome
|
||||||||||
| Competitors | 2 | |||||||||
| Medals Rank: 13 |
Gold 1 |
Silver 3 |
Bronze 0 |
Total 4 |
||||||
| Paralympic history (summary) | ||||||||||
| Summer Games | ||||||||||
| 1960 • 1964 • 1968 • 1972 • 1976 • 1980 • 1984 • 1988 • 1992 • 1996 • 2000 • 2004 • 2008 | ||||||||||
| Winter Games | ||||||||||
| 1976 • 1980 • 1984 • 1988 • 1992 • 1994 • 1998 • 2002 • 2006 • 2010 | ||||||||||
Switzerland was one of the seventeen nations that competed at the inaugural Summer Paralympic Games in 1960 held in Rome, Italy, from September 19 to 24, 1960.[1][2] Preparations for the Games began two years prior in 1958 to stage what was at the time called the 9th Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games.[3] The team finished thirteenth in the medal table with a total of four medals, one gold and three silver.[4] The Swiss team consisted of two athletes: Denis Favre, a man who competed in athletics and swimming events, and Simone Knusli, a woman who competed in swimming.[1]
Contents |
Athletes at the first Paralympics in 1960 were all afflicted by spinal cord injuries and required the use of a wheelchair.[3] This is in contrast to later Paralympics that include events for participants that fit into any of five different disability categories; amputation, either congenital or sustained through injury or illness; cerebral palsy; wheelchair athletes; visual impairment, including blindness; Les autres, any physical disability that does not fall strictly under one of the other categories, for example dwarfism or multiple sclerosis.[5][6] Each Paralympic sport then has its own classifications, dependent upon the specific physical demands of competition. Events are given a code, made of numbers and letters, describing the type of event and classification of the athletes competing.[7]
Denis Favre took part in two field events; the men's javelin C and the men's shot put C.[8] In the javelin Favre threw 21.71 metres to win the silver medal; gold was won by Enzo Santini of host nation Italy, who threw 22.90 metres, and the bronze medal went to Hepple of Great Britain.[9] Favre also won the silver medal in the shot put; his distance of 8.05 metres split the American pair of Ron Stein and Welger who took gold and bronze medals with distances of 10.13 metres and 7.77 metres respectively.[10]
Both of the Swiss athletes took part in a swimming event at the Games. Each won a medal as their events contained only three competitors.[8] Denis Favre won the gold medal in the men's 50 metres crawl complete class 5, beating his nearest rival Sznitowski of Argentina by 0.2 seconds.[11] In the women's 25 metres breaststroke complete class 2 Simone Knusli won the silver medal after finishing 2.1 seconds behind the winner of the event, Great Britain's Susan Masham.[12]
|
|||||||||||||||||