Right after the Nazis took
power in 1933, Ludwig Guttman,
one of the top neurosurgeons in Germany, was fired from his position at a
public hospital, because he was Jewish. In 1939, he and his family fled to
England, when they realized their lives were in danger.
Guttman convinced the British
government to start a new center for veterans with spinal injuries, and he
became the first director
of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Guttman
wanted to reintegrate his patients into society. Physical rehabilitation was
only the first phase of his treatment. One of his patients wrote, “One of the
most difficult tasks for a paraplegic is to cheer up his visitors!”
Guttman believed in athletic
activity, both to improve a patient’s physical health and to aid in integration
into the community, by increasing self-respect and competitive spirit. Some of
his paraplegic patients would roll their wheelchairs along the hospital halls
and hit objects with sticks. Guttman developed team sports, which became the
first Stoke Mandeville Games, when 16 ex-servicemen and -women competed in archery
on the day that the 1948 Olympics opened in London. In 1952, a team of Dutch
war veterans joined in, creating the first international games for the
disabled, with 130 participants.
In 1958, Guttman and the
Director of the Spinal Center in Rome, Antonia Maglio, started preparations for
the 9th Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games to be held in Rome
in 1960. Only athletes with spinal
cord injuries competed. The competition took place six days after the Rome
Olympic Games, and besides archery included swimming, wheelchair basketball and
fencing, and track and field.
The Rome Games were a
tremendous step for all athletes with physical impairments. Later that year, an
International Working Group on Sport for the Disabled was created to consider
sports for other kinds of disabilities: the blind, amputees, and persons with cerebral palsy.
In 1961, Guttman founded the British Sports Association for the Disabled, and
national organizations began to proliferate. Acceptance for the legitimacy of
international games for the disabled grew, and eventually in 1988 in Seoul the
word Paralympic came into official use.
The Games have expanded to
include 20 different sports and over 4000 participants from nearly every nation
in the world. In 1976 in Toronto, different disabilities were included for the
first time, expanding the games beyond athletes in wheelchairs. American
athletes won the most medals at each meeting until Sydney in 2000. The Chinese
made their first significant appearance then, and in the next meeting in
Atlanta in 2004 won the most medals, which they have done each time since. In
London in 2012, volleyball, cycling, and judo were added. In Rio, athletes will
compete for the first time in sailing and triathlon.
Many types of disabilities
from birth, disease or accident can distort the normal functioning of the human
body: missing limbs, limited range of motion of joints, decreased muscle power,
visual or intellectual impairment. The Paralympics movement has developed a complex
system of classifications to insure
“fair and equal competition”. In order to include as many athletes as possible,
there are multiple versions of the same event. In the 100-meter dash, 15 gold
medals can be won by women in different classes depending on degree of visual
impairment, or whether they are missing legs or arms.
The Rio triathlon exemplifies
the complexities of creating inclusivity among athletes with different
disabilities. Blind athletes can compete with a guide accompanying them in all
phases. Paraplegics use wheelchairs for the run and handcycles instead of
bicycles. Race bikes with adaptations are used by those with partial use of
their legs. Men and women competed for three gold medals in triathlon in Rio, including 10 blind women
in class PT5, each accompanied by a guide.
Looking for inspiration from
athletic success? Watch a one-legged high jumper from China clear the bar at 6'
5" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FoUNuTGFzg. That’s not a world record, though, because the
Canadian Arnie Boldt,
who lost a leg in a grain augur accident at age 3, jumped 6' 8" outdoors
and 6'10" indoors in 1981. Or watch the women’s 100-meter
final from London in 2012, when 9
runners with 7 full legs among them competed, and Martina Caironi set a new
world record of 15.87 seconds.
Ellen Keane
from Ireland used to wear long sleeves to cover up the fact that she was born
without a left arm. Now she proudly dons a swimsuit to compete in the 200-meter
individual medley, in which she won a bronze medal at the 2015 International
Paralympic Committee World Swimming Championships in Glasgow. She says,
“Sports taught me to accept my handicap. I now find it okay to have only one
arm. I wouldn’t have it any different.”
Dr. Guttman’s vision has been
realized on a world scale. The athletic performances of the thousands of
Paralympic athletes in Rio, far exceeding what most “normal” athletes could
accomplish, make the word handicapped seem inappropriate. None of them can earn
a living from professional sports. They have achieved much more: pride in what
their bodies can do, rather than shame for what they can’t.
Steve Hochstadt
Berlin, Germany
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, September 13, 2016
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