1992 Summer Paralympics


The 1992 Summer Paralympics were the ninth Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, the 1992 Paralympic Games for Persons with mental handicap were held immediately after the regular Paralympics in the Spanish capital, Madrid.

Sports

The games consisted of 560 events spread over fifteen sports. Powerlifting and weightlifting were considered to be a single sport. Wheelchair tennis, a demonstration sport at the 1988 Summer Paralympics, was contested as an official medal sport for the first time.
In total 11 venues were used at the 1992 Summer Olympics and one new one was used at the Games in Barcelona.

Montjuic

In the north of the city, the Horta-Guinardó District, hosted three sports:
A total of 1710 medals were awarded during the 1992 games: 555 gold, 557 silver, and 594 bronze. The United States topped the medal count with more gold medals, more silver medals, and more medals overall than any other nation. Germany took the most bronze medals, with 59. The Madrid medals are counted too and added in the table
In the table below, the ranking sorts by the number of gold medals earned by a nation.

Participating delegations

One hundred three delegations participated at the 1992 Summer Paralympics.
South Africa returned to the Paralympics for the first time since being declared "undesirable" due to its policy of apartheid in 1980. Countries who made their first appearances in the Barcelona Games were Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Iraq, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Seychelles, Tanzania, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Yemen.
Following the dissolutions of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia all competed as independent countries, some former Soviet republics competed for Unified Team. Germany competed as a reunified country for the first time.
Twenty-one countries did not send a delegation to Barcelona, but sent one to Madrid; they were: Aruba, Bolivia, Côte d'Ivoire, Curaçao, El Salvador, Fiji, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Philippines, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Suriname and Zimbabwe.
The official mascot was Petra, an armless girl designed by Javier Mariscal.

Paralympic Games for Persons with mental handicap

The first Paralympic Games for Persons with mental handicap were held immediately after the regular Paralympic games in the Spanish capital of Madrid from 15 to 22 September. Over 1,400 athletes from 74 nations participated in the competition, which was sponsored by the Association Nacional Prestura de Servicio and sanctioned by the International Coordinating Committee of World Sport Organizations for the Disabled and the International Association of Sport for the Mentally Handicapped. The games featured a cultural exchange group, a group of intellectually disabled men from Nagasaki who played taiko during the opening and closing ceremonies and selected track events.