Evolution of Racing Wheelchair: From Its Origin to the Paralympic Games

This paper presents an overview of wheelchair evolution, focused on the racing wheelchairs, from wheelchair origins to the modern Paralympic Games. The evolution starts from the first wheeled vehicles to transport persons in ancient cultures and goes through the middle of the XIX century, when the first patent of a wheelchair, named “Invalid chair”, appeared. After World War II, Dr. Ludwing Guttman founded the “Stoke Mandeville Games”, the forerunners of the Paralympic Games, and this initiative started the evolution of competition wheelchairs described in its main steps. Lastly, an innovative racing wheelchair, named Handhwheelchair.q racing, conceived and realized by the authors is described.