4) The first peer alympick
Read the lord and
Expehrin how the Dar albympics were created (chronology)
Pan
Why they were inverted
Who were the athletes
Who was the invention
1 The first "Paralympics"
W
Seventy years ago this year, on July 29,
1948, the first Stoke Mandeville Games were
held. The games an archery competition for
wheelchair athletes - went on to become an
s annual event and eventually inspired the Paralym-
pic Games. [...]. On July 29, 1948, the day of the
Opening Ceremony of the London 1948 Olympic
Games, a competition for wheelchair athletes took
place at Stoke Mandeville. 16 patients (14 men and
10 two women) from Stoke Mandeville and the Star
and Garter Home took part in an archery tour-
nament. The competition became an annual event
which was named the Stoke Mandeville Games.
More teams and sports were added as years went
is by; in 1949 six teams competed and 'wheelchair
netball' which later became wheelchair basket-
ball 1-was introduced. [...]
Dr Ludwig Guttman was a respected Jewish
neurosurgeon who had been forced to flee his
20 homeland of Germany in 1939 to escape Nazi
persecution. Five years later, he was asked by
the British government to open a Spinal Injuries
Unit at Stoke Mandeville, intended to treat sol-
diers and civilians
25 injured during the
war. As part of his
treatment for the
injured veterans,
Guttmann pro-
30 moted sport as a
means of physical
and mental reha-
Margaret Webb at the Stoke
Mandeville Games, 1953.
bilitation. The first sport played by patients was
a hybrid form of wheelchair polo and hockey, ini-
35 tially played informally on the ward against the
physiotherapists, before it was developed into a
proper team game. Guttman became a naturalised
British citizen in 1945. The Games he created grew
in size and stature; by 1952, more than 130 inter-
40 national competitors had taken part. This attracted
the support and appreciation of the wider sporting
community, and in 1956 Guttmann was awarded
the Sir Thomas Fearnley Cup by the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) for his achievement. [...]
"What Were the Stoke Mandeville Games? Celebrating 70
Years Since the First Paralympics", Chas Early, 2018.