Athletics: Flame burns at Parallel Games: A seed planted by 'Papa' Guttmann has grown and blossomed into the Paralympic movement. Chris Maume reports

TOMORROW afternoon, in the Olympic Stadium at the top of Montjuic in Barcelona, an archer's burning arrow will fly up to light the Olympic flame.

A scene familiar from a few weeks ago, but with a different emphasis. Again it will be a disabled archer, but this time it will be the ninth Paralympic Games that will commence. Not the 'Paraplegic Games' as David Coleman so unfortunately announced on television during the Olympics, but the 'Parallel Olympics'.

Just as so many sports seem to have had their origins in Britain, the Paralympic movement had its beginnings here, at Stoke Mandeville hospital for spinal injuries after the Second World War. Sir Ludwig Guttmann began a sports-based rehabilitation programme for disabled ex-servicemen and women.

'Papa' Guttmann took a robust approach, cajoling his patients into activity, and in 1948 the first games were held for 16 of his charges to coincide with the Olympics in London. Four years later they went international when 52 Dutch ex-servicemen came over to join the fun, and in 1960 the first Paralympic Games were held in Rome. Since then they have been held whenever possible in the same city or country as the Olympics.

Thanks to funding from the ONCE Foundation (the Spanish national organisation for the blind) nearly 20,000 people will be there in total - a couple of thousand more than at the Olympics - with around 4,000 athletes in 15 different sports going for 555 gold medals. That figure is down from 723 in Seoul four years ago, due to a new classification system that gets rid of any event with fewer than six competitors.

Controversially, British selectors have been doing their own pruning, too. In Seoul there were 240 Britons competing; this time round there will be only 207. The aim is to raise standards by selecting only those with a chance of reaching their finals, a move that echoes the development about to take place in the Olympics, which some say is a derogation of the ideal that taking part, and not winning, is the thing. Not that Britain did badly last time, coming third in the medals table behind the United States and West Germany with 179 (62 gold, 66 silver, 51 bronze).

Funding for the British team is slightly problematic - the British Paralympic Association is still awaiting a cheque from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, but Royal Mail have provided pounds 250,000, while the team's air fares came courtesy of British Airways.

The reason for the multiplicity of medals is the number of different disabilities, with four main categories - visual impairment, cerebral palsy, wheelchair sports and a mixed bag called Les Autres, which includes congenital deformities and abnormalities, arthritic conditions, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, polio and amputees.

Athletics and swimming form the centrepiece, if only by dint of numbers - more than 900 on track and field and nearly 500 in the pool. But there is plenty more.

Wheelchair basketball is played by paraplegics, amputees and people with polio. The rules are virtually identical to the able-bodied version, and a glance at The Big Eight series on Channel Four reveals the enormous level of skill and physical commitment.

Boccia is a boules-type game of ancient provenance, thought to go back to the Greeks. Rediscovered 15 years ago, it was quickly adapted for disabled players, and is one of the few mixed events on show.

The adaptation of cycling is quite recent. Cyclists with cerebral palsy do the time trials, while the visually impaired race on tandems with sighted guides. Amputees and those with limb deficiencies compete in road races with specially adapted bikes.

The first international wheelchair fencing event was at Stoke Mandeville in 1955. The wheelchair is fixed to the piste by a device which allows free movement. In Barcelona, for the first time, the electronic scoring apparatus will be the same as that used in traditional fencing.

Another sport restricted at the Games to wheelchairs is tennis, where the only concession is that two bounces are allowed, although most try to avoid the advantage.

Table tennis is played in and out of wheelchairs, as are volleyball, weightlifting, shooting and archery, where standards approach the able-bodied versions. In Los Angeles in 1984, the New Zealander, Neroli Fairhall, became the first disabled athlete to take part in an Olympics, coming 38th in the archery.

The last three sports are single-category: seven-a-side football, played exclusively at the Games by people with cerebral palsy, and judo and goalball, both played by the visually impaired. Goalball is like handball, with a bell in the ball, and with each player blindfolded to make sure every player has the same disadvantage.

So where will you be able to see the Paralympics? The BBC plans four half-hour slots in Grandstand on 12 and 19 September, with some highlights packages on Sky and Channel 4's Breakfast News. Perhaps one day there will be the same wall-to-wall coverage the Olympics enjoy.

(Photograph omitted)