Stoke Mandeville: The Crucible of Disabled Sport’ Announced as Lighting Point For Paralympic Torches

Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire recognised around the world as the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, has been affirmed as the ‘lighting point’ for Paralympic torches, with the announcement in early October (2023) that the flame will be kindled there several months before the Games, as it is in Greece for the Olympics, before it is taken around the world!

So, why Stoke Mandeville?

In the summer of 1948, Dr Ludwig Guttmann, who had escaped Nazi Germany nine years earlier and working as a neurologist at the hospital, decided to organise an archery competition for 16 war veterans, who had suffered spinal –injuries which he called ’The Stoke Mandeville Games’, due to his firm belief that exercise could play a vital role in their rehabilitation programme.

Born in 1899 in Tost in Germany into an orthodox Jewish family, Guttmann, completed his medical degree in 1924 and worked with Europe’s leading neurologist Otfreid Forster until had he was invited to start a ‘neurological unit’ in Hamburg four years later.

In 1939 however, together with his wife and family, he fled Germany for the UK and secured a post at The Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, but in 1943 he was asked to become the Director of The National Spinal Injury Centre at The Emergency Medical Services Hospital at Stoke Mandeville and so began the most remarkable medical career.

Guttmann accepted the post on the strict condition that he would be free to implement his own theories on how best to treat patients with spinal injuries and in 1944 the unit opened for the first time.

He believed in the power of sport and promoted it in the form of rehabilitation, integration and motivation and saw it as

An integral method of therapy for those with a physical disability to help them build strength and self respect

Sport for athletes with a disability had existed for well over a century and in fact, several athletes with disabilities had competed at the Olympics, one of the earliest being George Eyser from the USA who in 1904 at The St Louis games won three Gold medals in the Gymnastics competition despite wearing a wooden leg.

In 1928 in Amsterdam the Hungarian Water Polo player Oliver Halassy won a Silver medal and then a Gold at the Berlin games in 1936, despite missing a left leg that had been amputated below the knee following a childhood accident and as recently as 2021, the Table Tennis player Milly Tapper who was born with severe nerve damage in her right arm, became the first Australian to compete in both the Olympics and Paralympics!

Following on from the successful Archery competition in 1948, Guttmann organised a ‘Grand Festival of Paraplegic Sport’ a year later, which included 37 athletes and two sports, with wheelchair Netball being added.

In 1952 a team from The Netherlands entered and four years later 18 nations were represented at the festival and in 1960 Guttmann’s ‘therapy programme’ was taken to Rome for what is now seen as ‘The first Paralympic Games!’

The ‘Liverpool Echo’ announced in 1959 that:

Rome will be the scene of not one great sport gathering but two….the 1960 Olympic Games will be followed immediately by the Paralympics ( meaning Parallel) and the competition will include athletes mainly participating in wheelchairs

This competition was not restricted to athletes with spinal injuries and had expanded to include sports like Swimming, Snooker, Tennis, Basketball and Fencing and took place after The Rome Olympics of the same year (Italy topped the table with Great Britain in second) and has taken place every four years since that year, apart from in 2020 due to the global pandemic.

It would be 1988 before the Games were again held in the same city as the able bodied version in Seoul South Korea and it celebrated its 35th anniversary in October 2023.

Guttmann who was knighted in 1966 also founded The International Medical Society of Paraplegia (later known as The International Spinal Cord Society) and The British Sports Association for the Disabled, where he was president between 1968 and 1979.

In 1972 he travelled back to Germany to celebrate the first Paralympic Games in Heidelburg and so great was the impact of his visit that a street was named after him in the city a year later.

Sadly he suffered a heart attack in 1979 and died one year later at the age of 80.

Dr Guttmann’s programme now features over 4, 350 athletes from 180 countries across 22 sports and speaking in 2018 his daughter Eva Loeffler, reflected on her father’s life:

My father achieved so much during his life but his legacy is The Modern Paralympic Games, now the third largest global sporting event behind The Olympics and The Men’s Football World Cup and I am immensely proud of him

In his welcoming speech at the Archery competition in 1948 Guttmann said:

I deam of the day when there will be an Olympics for people with disabilities

His dream has come true of course and 75 years on the Paralympic flame will now forever burn brightly into the skies above Stoke Mandeville.

 

Article Copyright of Bill Williams