Stoke Mandeville in the context of "2012 Summer Paralympics"

The 1984 International Games for the Disabled, commonly known as the 1984 Summer Paralympics, were the seventh Paralympic Games to be held. There were two separate competitions: one in Stoke Mandeville, England, United Kingdom for wheelchair athletes with spinal cord injuries and the other at the Mitchel Athletic Complex and Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, United States for wheelchair and ambulatory athletes with cerebral palsy, amputees, and les autres [the others] (conditions as well as blind and visually impaired athletes). Stoke Mandeville had been the location of the Stoke Mandeville Games from 1948 onwards, seen as the precursors to the Paralympic Games, as the 9th International Stoke Mandeville Games in Rome in 1960 are now recognised as the first Summer Paralympics.

As with the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, the Soviet Union and other communist countries, except China, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, did not participate in the Paralympic Games. The Soviet Union did not participate in the Paralympics at the time, arguing that they have no disabled people (called "invalids" by Soviet officials) in the country. A delegation of 18 blind Soviet athletes registered for the International Games for the Disabled, but withdrew its participation weeks before the opening ceremony due to the Olympic boycott. The USSR made its Paralympic debut in 1988, during Perestroika.