Athletes participating 486 Opening ceremony March 10 | Nations participating 39 | |
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The 2006 Winter Paralympic Games (Italian: IX Giochi paralimpici invernali), the ninth Winter Paralympics, took place in Turin, Italy from 10 to 19 March 2006. These were the first Winter Paralympic Games to be held in Italy. They were also the first Paralympics to use the new Paralympics logo.
Contents
Medal count
The top 10 NPCs by number of gold medals are listed below. The host nation (Italy) is highlighted.
Sports
The Games featured 58 medal events in five disciplines of four sports. As with other Paralympic Games, medals are awarded for each classification within each event. The sport of wheelchair curling made its Paralympic debut at these games.
Venues
The sport venues were also used during the Winter Olympics, although not all Olympic venues were in use for the Paralympics.
Alpine skiing events were held at Sestriere. Cross-country skiing and biathlon events were held at Cesana San Sicario. All skiing athletes were accommodated in the Alpine Paralympic Village in Sestriere.
Ice sledge hockey was held in Turin, and wheelchair curling was held in Pinerolo. These athletes were accommodated in the City Paralympic Village in Turin.
Participants
Thirty-nine National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) entered athletes at the 2006 Winter Paralympics. This was an increase of three from the 36 represented at the 2002 Winter Paralympics. The number in parentheses indicates the number of participants from each NPC.
Note that, although Greece was scheduled to compete, no Greek athlete took part in any event; the International Paralympic Committee does not list Greece as having entered any athlete in the Games, and considers that there were thirty-eight NPCs at the Games, rather than thirty-nine.
A total of 486 athletes participated in the Games, 385 male and 101 female. This is an increase from the 430 athletes participated in 2002. Despite overall increase of delegates and athletes, the following nations who participated in the 2002 Winter Paralympics did not send athletes to Turin.
Mexico is the only country who had sent an athlete to these Games but not the Winter Olympic Games in 2006.
Other information
These are the second Paralympic Games to be held in Italy, which hosted the first Summer Paralympics in Rome in 1960.
These are the first Paralympic Games to feature a live webcast of events, hosted by ParalympicSport.TV.
The Games mascot is Aster, a star-shaped snowflake similar in design to the Olympic mascots Neve and Gliz.
Unable to fund the hosting themselves, the Olympic organizing committee TOROC sold the rights off to a company for an estimated US$40 million