The Paralympic Games

1. What do you know about the Paralympic Games?

2. Read the bold words and their explanations. Give their Russian equivalents.

3. Read the text and answer the questions below.

The Paralympic Games are a major international multi-sport event where athletes with a physical disability compete. Athletes with disabilities did compete in the Olympic Games prior to the arrival of the Paralympics. The first athlete to do so was American gymnast George Eyser in 1904, he had one artificial leg. Hungarian Karoly Takacs competed in shooting events in both the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics. He was a right-arm amputee and was able to shoot left-handed. Another disabled athlete to appear in the Olympics prior to the Paralympic Games was Liz Hartel, a Danish equestrian ^[1] athlete who had contracted polio ^[2] in 1943 and won a silver medal in the dressage ^[3] event.

The first organized athletic event for disabled athletes that coincided with the Olympic Games took place during 1948 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom. Dr. Ludwig Guttmann of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, who had been helped to flee Nazi Germany by the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics in 1939, hosted a sports competition for British World War II veteran patients with spinal cord ^[4] injuries. The first games were called the 1948 International Wheelchair Games, and were intended to coincide with the 1948Olympics. Dr. Guttman's aim was to create an elite sports competition for people with disabilities that would be equivalent to the Olympic Games. The games were held again at the same location in 1952, and Dutch veterans took part alongside the British, making it the first international competition of its kind. These early competitions, also known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, have been described as the precursors ^[5] of the Paralympic Games.

1. Did athletes with disabilities compete before the appearance of the Paralympics? Give examples.

2. Who organised the first games for disabled athletes? Who participated in them?

3. What was the first international competition of this kind?

Read the article below. The following sentences have been removed from the article. Decide in which numbered gap each one should go. (There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.)

A) Somewhere in the process of growing up we lose an astonishing 385 laughs a day.

В) It also makes our facial and stomach muscles work.

С) He is convinced that humour should be a part of every medical consultation.

D) Some have even been referred by their family doctors.

E) They divided forty university students into four groups.

F) This will also help improve your personal relationships.

G) But we could be losing our ability to laugh.

H) This is laughter therapy in action.

Why laughter is the best medicine?

Our unserious side is being taken seriously by doctors. Laughing helps you fight illness – and gets you fit. But how it works is still being puzzled out.

A group of adults are lying in a circle on the floor listening to a recording of ‘The Laughing Policeman'. At first everyone feels ridiculous and there's only the odd nervous giggle, but suddenly the laughter becomes real. It quickly spreads around the room until everyone is infected by it. (1 _______)

Doctors are starting to believe that laughter not only improves your state of mind, but actually affects your entire physical well-being. The people

lying in a circle are attending a workshop to learn the forgotten art of laughter. (2 ________)

Britain's first laughter therapist, Robert Holden says: 'Instinctively we know that laughing helps us feel healthy and alive. Each time we laugh we feel better and more content.'

(3 _______) A French newspaper found that in 1930 the French laughed on average for nineteen minutes per day. By 1980 this had fallen to six minutes. Eighty per cent of the people questioned said that they would like to laugh more. Other research suggests that children laugh on average about 400 times a day, but by the time they reach adulthood this has been reduced to about fifteen times. (4 _______)

William Fry – a psychiatrist from California – studied the effects of laughter on the body. He got patients to watch Laurel and Hardy films, and monitored their blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tone. He found that laughter has a similar effect to physical exercise. It speeds up the heart rate, increases blood pressure and quickens breathing. (5____)

Fry thinks laughter is a type of jogging on the spot.

Laughter can even provide a kind of pain relief. Fry has proved that laughter produces endorphins - chemicals in the body that relieve pain.

Researchers from Texas tested this.(6______) The first group listened to a funny cassette for twenty minutes, the second listened to a cassette intended to relax them, the third heard an informative tape, while the fourth group listened to no tape at all.

Researchers found that if they produced pain in the students, those who had listened to the humorous tape could tolerate the discomfort for much longer.

Patch Adams is both a doctor and a performing clown in Virginia, America. (7______) ‘There's evidence to suggest that laughter stimulates the immune system,’ says Adams, 'yet hospitals and clinics are well-known for their depressing atmospheres.' Adams practises what he preaches. He wears his waist-length hair in a ponytail and also has a handlebar moustache. He usually puts on a red nose when seeing patients.

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