Robert Steadward has long been a key advocate of the disability sport movement. He helped found the International Paralympic Committee and served as its first president. In an agreement with the International Olympic Committee in 2000, he helped ensure the same city would host the Olympics and Paralympics moving forward.
At an international meeting in the Netherlands in 1987, he unveiled a proposal for global governance of Paralympic sports. Major changes were adopted and a few years later Steadward became founding president of the International Paralympic Committee, serving from 1989 to 2001.
The high point of his career came on October 20, 2000, when, during the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, Steadward and Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, signed a historic memorandum of understanding.
The document solidified the relationship between the two organizations. It created the requirement that the host city for the Olympic games would also host the Paralympic games and strengthened funding and administrative support for the Paralympics.
https://around.uoregon.edu/content/game-changer-steadward-supports-paralympic-athletes
