Sport is good for everyone, and this includes the blind and visually impaired.It stimulates orientation and mobility skills, develops other abilities and fosters camaraderie and other values intrinsic to sporting activities.Athletics, swimming, tandem cycling, judo, mountaineering, chess, 5-a-side football and goalball (a sport specifically for the blind) are the most widely practised sports.

The ONCE encourages sports at all levels and for all ages - children, young people, adults and the elderly - depending on their abilities – and prepares the most gifted for top-level competition.Spain’s blind athletes have demonstrated at the Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games that they are right up there with the very best.And now for Athens (September 2004).

The ONCE’s committment to sport for the disabled is also materialized through its presidency of the Spanish Paralympic Committee.In addition, since 1993, a member of the ONCE presides over the International Blind Sports Association (IBSA), which in 2003 organized the II World Blind Sports Championship in Quebec, at which Spanish sportspeople won 105 medals.