Stoke Mandeville Games (1948): The Origins of the Paralympics

The Stoke Mandeville Games began on 29 July 1948 with an archery competition on the lawn of Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England. Its organiser, the neurologist Ludwig Guttmann, held it on the same day as the opening of the London Olympics. From sixteen paralysed competitors it grew within twelve years into an international event that is now recognised as the forerunner of the Paralympic Games.

Background: a new approach to spinal injury

Before the Second World War most people with serious spinal cord injuries died within a few years, often from infections and pressure sores. Ludwig Guttmann, born in 1899 in Tost, then in Germany, was a leading neurologist in Breslau. As a Jew he was barred from practising in German hospitals by the Nazi regime, and in 1939 he escaped with his family to Britain, where he worked in Oxford.

In 1943 the British government, expecting heavy casualties from the coming invasion of Europe, asked him to set up a spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury. It opened on 1 February 1944. Guttmann insisted on constant care, regular turning of patients, and above all on restoring their confidence and independence. He introduced sport, first darts, snooker and wheelchair polo, then archery and basketball, as part of rehabilitation.

Guttmann believed that sport did more than strengthen muscles. It improved patients’ balance, coordination and stamina, but also restored their self-respect and gave them a reason to leave their beds. Archery was particularly valuable because it built up the shoulders and upper body that wheelchair users relied on, and because it could be practised from a seated position on equal terms. Many of his early patients were young servicemen injured during the war, and his goal was to return them to work and to society rather than to long-term institutional care.

The first games

On 29 July 1948 Guttmann staged an archery contest between two teams of wheelchair users: patients from Stoke Mandeville and residents of the Star and Garter Home for disabled ex-servicemen in Richmond, Surrey. Sixteen people competed, fourteen men and two women, most of them former servicemen and women. The Star and Garter team won.

The event was modest. There were no spectators beyond hospital staff and visitors, and the competitors shot at targets set up in the hospital grounds. Guttmann nonetheless treated it as a serious competition.

Coming on the opening day of the 1948 London Olympics, the event was deliberately symbolic. Guttmann spoke publicly of his hope that the games would one day become recognised as an Olympic equivalent for disabled people.

Growth into an international event

The games were repeated each summer at the hospital, with more sports and teams from other British spinal units. In 1952 a team of Dutch ex-servicemen took part, making it the first International Stoke Mandeville Games, with about 130 competitors.

The event continued to grow through the 1950s, adding sports such as table tennis, fencing, swimming and javelin. In 1956 the International Olympic Committee awarded the games the Fearnley Cup, given for outstanding service to the Olympic ideal.

In 1960 the games were held outside Britain for the first time, in Rome, shortly after the Rome Olympics. Organised with the Italian doctor Antonio Maglio, director of a spinal centre near Rome, they brought together around 400 athletes from 23 countries and opened on 18 September. These 9th International Stoke Mandeville Games are now officially counted as the first Paralympic Games. The 1964 Games followed the Tokyo Olympics.

Key people

• Ludwig Guttmann (1899–1980), neurologist and founder of the games, knighted in 1966.
• Antonio Maglio (1912–1988), Italian physician who co-organised the 1960 Games in Rome.

Legacy

Guttmann founded the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation to run the event, and the movement gradually expanded to include athletes with other impairments, such as amputees and blind and visually impaired athletes from 1976. The word “Paralympic”, popularised informally around the 1964 Tokyo Games, was later explained as “parallel” to the Olympics. The International Paralympic Committee was founded in 1989.

The Stoke Mandeville Stadium, opened beside the hospital in 1969, remains a national centre for disabled sport. When London hosted the 2012 Paralympics, flames lit in the four home nations were united at Stoke Mandeville to create the Paralympic flame, and one of the Games’ mascots was named Mandeville.

Timeline

• 1944, 1 February: The spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville opens under Guttmann.
• 1948, 29 July: Sixteen wheelchair archers compete in the first Stoke Mandeville Games.
• 1952: A Dutch team joins, creating the first International Stoke Mandeville Games.
• 1956: The IOC awards the games the Fearnley Cup.
• 1960, 18 September: The Rome Games, later recognised as the first Paralympics, open.
• 1989: The International Paralympic Committee is founded.

Why it matters

The Stoke Mandeville Games changed how people with spinal injuries were seen, from patients expected to die to athletes able to compete. The Paralympic Games, now one of the largest sporting events in the world, trace their origins to a single archery contest on a hospital lawn.