Abstract
The literature on the history of the Paralympics movement tends to present the British games of Stoke Mandeville as the unique origin of the movement and neurosurgeon, Guttman, as a founder hero. Yet, in France initiatives were carried out outside the British dynamics of sports for physically handicapped. They resulted in a range of sports offers stemming out of a self-organized movement created by and for civilian disabled and war-disabled. This self-organization of physically handicapped people, quickly took on a sporting dimension, distinguishing itself from the organizations doctors working in functional rehabilitation services would propose to their patients in the United Kingdom. The French movement quickly took part into the national sports movement. It got structured with a view to include all disabled people into the sporting sphere, then went further into the process of extension and sportivation within international standards. This study builds on a set of data drawn from various revues from different associations of sports movement for French physically disabled from 1954 to 1972. Interviews with major French leaders have also been inserted. We privileged internal sources to focus on the analysis of self-organization dynamics.