Para-judo

Para-Judo is a Paralympic sport which is an adaptation of judo for visually impaired athletes because these athletes possess highly developed qualities like balance, tactical skill, strength, touch proprioception and combative instinct. The rules of para-judo are somewhat different from that of the regular judo matches. The main difference is that in para-judo, judokas have a loose grip on each other’s judo suits at the start and the playing mat has a different texture so that the athletes know where the boundary is. The sport was first introduced as a competitive sport at the Summer Paralympics in 1988 at the Seoul Games for men and in 2004 at Athens for women and is the only martial art in the Paralympics.