By the time of the 1976 summer Paralympics, there was still little evidence of specialisation in sports wheelchairs. Track racing chairs were still enormously unstable, with short wheelbases and small front wheels, although these were starting to increase. The pushrims, also, could be almost as large as the main wheels, although this too was changing. In basketball, the chairs rarely had stabilising back wheels and the main wheels were vertical, compared with modern cambered wheels. All in all, the sports chairs at the time had just begun to evolve from day chairs.
Date: August 1976
Author: These images are stills from a film made by Donald Worley about Australia's participation at the 1976 Summer Paralympics in Toronto, Canada.
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