**2. Special Olympics**

*"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." (Special Olympics Athletes Oath)*

Special Olympics (SO), the world's largest sport organization for both children and adults with ID, included in word Olympic network, holds many sport events every year at both national and world levels and provides all year-round sport training for a continuous physical fitness development. SO offers more than 30 individual and team sports and gives people with ID a chance to discover new strength, abilities, skills, social inclusion, and success through sports [13].

The worldwide SO movement was started in the 1950s in the USA, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver held a summer day camp for young people with ID and recognized that through sports, people with ID can develop their mental and adaptive capacities. In 1968 the first SO competition was held, and the abilities of athletes with ID were highlighted instead of their disabilities to create the atmosphere for acceptance and inclusion for all people. Nowadays, SO includes 5 million athletes from more than 170 countries [14]. In the Czech Republic, approximately 3000 athletes participate in trainings and competitions within the Czech Special Olympics Movement. SO sport program includes athletes with ID below 75 IQ points, including athletes with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and perception impairment. Therefore, various sports or events with a differently demanding relation to sports are available, e.g., cross-country skiing 50 m or 3 km race, table tennis (TT), and bowling. Coaches or parents are responsible for appropriate choice of sport event according to the level of athlete executive functions, healthy status, athlete interest, and external environment. Coaches or parents are also responsible for regular training and motivation to compete with maximum effort and fair play behavior. The competitions are based on the principle of relativity, when athletes compete in groups depending on their actual abilities and limitations [15].

Additional programs of SO are oriented on families, independent behavior of the athletes, public awareness, education, research, and Healthy Athletes program including, e.g., FUNfitness, FitFeet, or Health Promotion screening [13, 16, 17]. Healthy Athletes program was started in 1997 and offers a free health screenings and healthy lifestyle education to SO athletes in a welcoming and fun environment including the area of podiatry, physical therapy, audiology, vision, dentistry, emotional well-being, sport physical exam, and better health and well-being. The aim of this program is to improve the access to health service for people with ID [18].

Benefits of physical activities for athletes with ID are similar to those for general population: (1) improved physical factors, e.g., aerobic capacity, gross motor function,

**53**

**4. Aim**

**5. Methods**

*Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Intellectual Disability DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86824*

**3. Heart rate in people with ID**

hand coordination and quickness [13].

**3.2 Cross-country skiing in SO**

reaches the 90.3% of the players' maximal HR [26].

the terrain plasticity (uphill, downhill, flat, and curves) [28].

skiers is approximately 90% of the maximal HR [20].

**3.1 Table tennis in SO**

balance, and muscle strength; (2) improved psychological factors, e.g., self-concept, self-esteem, satisfaction, quality of life, and reduced aggression; and (3) improved social factors, e.g., social competence, popularity, and parent satisfaction [19].

Heart rate (HR), expressed by a number of cardiac cycles per minute, is a commonly used indicator of intensity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and sympathetic activation in sports and exercise. The long-term endurance training should lead to a reduced resting HR [20]. Furthermore, individuals with Down syndrome exhibit reduced peak HR, and in severe and profound ID, HR can be used to assess the information about emotions as a lower HR in the first 6 seconds of stimulus presen-

Table tennis is a complex and demanding game with many technical and tactical aspects. This game has specific requirements on attention, visual perception, executive functions, learning, and adaptation skills of the athlete [23, 24]. Eye-hand coordination and knowledge of tactics, e.g., appropriate stroke for the situation, are needed. Besides, top TT players study their opponents to attack their opponents' weakness to win [9, 24]. The aim in the TT in Special Olympics is to improve eye-

TT is characterized by short-term maximal efforts with passive resting intervals. The intensity during the game depends on the level and type of player (attackerdefender), gender, and age [25]. During the match in TT professional players, HR

In SO cross-country skiing athletes with ID propel themselves across snowcovered terrain using skis and poles, and the distance differs from 50 m XC skiing race classical technique up to 10 km XC skiing race according to each athlete's skills [27]. Fifty and 100 m events are held on a flat terrain; 500 m to 10 km race respects

During XC skiing HR values were described to depend on the terrain (uphill, downhill, flat section) [29], and during the race, the average HR of professional XC

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the difference between resting HR and HR after 2 minutes of exercise and to compare the cardiovascular fitness between table tennis players and in XC skiers with ID competing in 50 m, 1 km, and 3 km races.

Ten TT players (six males, 27 years of age; four females, 29.5 years of age; described in [30]) participated in the heart rate screening at the Czech National Table Tennis Tournament in 2015. Their pre-match HR was measured 1 minute before

tation was observed when presenting a negative stimulus [21, 22].

balance, and muscle strength; (2) improved psychological factors, e.g., self-concept, self-esteem, satisfaction, quality of life, and reduced aggression; and (3) improved social factors, e.g., social competence, popularity, and parent satisfaction [19].
