{"id":9687,"date":"2020-04-28T17:44:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T15:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/para-hockey\/history\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T13:15:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T11:15:40","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/para-hockey\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Para hockey<\/h2>\n\n

Para Hockey is the official Paralympic version of ice hockey with more than 50 years of tradition. The previously used sledge hockey name changed to para hockey after the unification of all paralympic sports in 2018.<\/p>\n\n

It is played in special sledges (hence the name sledge), which has two knives instead of the base. Players move by using two sticks, which have a steel tip on one end and a blade on the other. Therefore, hockey sticks serve not only to control the puck, but also to move players.<\/p>\n\n

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History<\/h2>\n\n

The history of para hockey dates back to the early 1960s, when patients in a Stockholm Rehabilitation Center did not want to give up hockey despite their disabilities. They built a special sledge and as hockey sticks they used rounded sticks with bicycle handlebars. Para hockey then went through a rapid development.<\/p>\n\n

Para hockey was first included in the Paralympic programme in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway, and immediately became one of its most attractive events.<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Para hockey in the Czech republic<\/h2>\n\n

In the Czech Republic, para hockey was first played in Zl\u00edn in 1999. Today, the top-level competition is contested by teams from Karlovy Vary, Pardubice, Hav\u00ed\u0159ov, Olomouc, Zl\u00edn, Ostrava and Prague. These teams compete in the Czech Para Hockey League, the national championship run by the Czech Para Hockey Association, which has been part of the Czech Ice Hockey Association since 2006. The Czech national para hockey team (formerly the sledge hockey team) was founded in 2002.<\/p>\n\n

The most successful para hockey championship in history took place in Ostrava in spring 2019. The 2019 World Para Ice Hockey Championships in Ostrava drew some 45,000 fans in a single week, beating even the record attendances of para hockey games at the Paralympics and overseas tournaments.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

Roman Herink \u2013 one of the founders of para hockey in the Czech Republic<\/h2>\n\n

He saw sledge hockey at the Nagano Paralympics in 1998. As a wheelchair user he immediately caught his eye and at that time he began to invent a crazy idea of how to launch this sport in the Czech Republic. Despite all the complications of lacking finance and equipment, he began to construct the first sledge. With a self-made prototype, he managed to get out onto the ice roughly after a year of work.<\/p>\n\n

In 2005 he co-organized a Europe Championship in Zlin with Martin Kudlicek from Palacky University and subsequently he organized several international tournaments. The 2009 World Championships in Ostrava at which he functioned as the chairman of the organisation committee can be considered as the peak of his professional career as well as his personally fulfilled goals in sledge hockey.<\/p>\n\n

Roman Herink was the oldest member of the 2010 Czech Vancouver Paralympics. He is a legend in the Czech sledge hockey world. He was managing Zl\u00edn as part of the Czech sledge hockey league until 2012 as a general manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Para hockey Para Hockey is the official Paralympic version of ice hockey with more than 50 years of tradition. The previously used sledge hockey name changed to para hockey after the unification of all paralympic sports in 2018. It is played in special sledges (hence the name sledge), which has two knives instead of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":9601,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9687","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9687"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26149,"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9687\/revisions\/26149"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parahockey.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}