International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability

The founding meeting of the first Executive Committee took place in January 1986 and the organisation became a member of the ICC – the International Coordinating Committee – the organisation that later became the International Paralympic Committee.

INAS’ original membership was just 14 nations which has steadily grown into c.80 nations today.

In 1989, the 1st World Games for Athletes with an Intellectual Disability were held in Harnosand, Sweden and in 1992, immediately after the Barcelona Paralympic Games, the first Paralympic Games for ‘Persons with mental handicap’ were held in Madrid.[2]

In 1994, INAS-FMH became INAS-FID – the ‘International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability’ and in 1996, for the first time, a small programme of events for athletes with an intellectual disability were included in the Paralympic Games in Atlanta.

A larger programme including Athletics, Swimming and Basketball was included in the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000, but it soon emerged that a small number of athletes had cheated the system of determining eligibility, resulting in the suspension of events — a suspension that was to remain in place until 2009.

Despite exclusion from the Paralympic Games, the Inas sport programme continued to grow considerably to incorporate more than 10 sports whilst its membership grew to cover all 5 continents.

INAS provides competition opportunities for elite athletes with an intellectual disability in Paralympic and non-Paralympic sports and is different from Special Olympics, which provides non-elite opportunities worldwide.

Athletes with an intellectual disability are characterised by an IQ of 75 or below, significant limitations in Adaptive Behaviour and the disability must be present before the age of 18. This is based on the American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disability definition of Intellectual Disability.

Approximately 1.5% of the population are thought to have an intellectual disability.

Today's sport programme includes some 15 annual events, more than 4000 athletes are registered to compete at an international level, whilst many hundreds of thousands of people with an intellectual disability have the opportunity to enjoy sport through the work of member organisations.

Following a partnership between INAS and the International Paralympic Committee to overhaul the process of determining athlete eligibility, events for athletes with an intellectual disability were re-instated to the Paralympic programme by the IPC General Assembly in November 2009, in preparation for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

In 2019, INAS rebranded as Virtus.

• Official website
• American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disability