Outandabout-Magazine-Oct-issue-191

32 | OUT AND ABOUT COSTA BLANCA
Miriam Margolyes, now a famous actress. The
Jewish community in Oxford was growing
rapidly as a result of the influx of displaced
academic Jews from Europe.
With the outbreak of the Second World War,
Guttmann and his family stayed in the home of
Lord Lindsay, CARA Councillor and Master of
Balliol College.
Stoke Mandeville Hospital
In September 1943, the British government
asked Guttmann to establish the National Spinal
Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital
in Buckinghamshire. The initiative came from
the Royal Air Force to make sure the treatment
and rehabilitation of pilots with spine injuries,
“who often crashed on approach with their
bombers damaged”. When the centre opened
on 1 February 1944, the United Kingdom’s
first specialist unit for treating spinal injuries,
Guttmann was appointed its director (a position
he held until 1966). He believed that sport
was an important method of therapy for the
rehabilitation of injured military personnel,
helping them build up physical strength and
self-respect.
Guttmann became a naturalised British citizen
in 1945. He organised the first Stoke Mandeville
Games for disabled war veterans, which was
held at the hospital on 29 July 1948, the same
day as the opening of the London Olympics.
All participants had spinal cord injuries and
competed in wheelchairs. In an effort to
encourage his patients to take part in national
events, Guttmann used the term Paraplegic
Games
These came to be known as the “Paralympic
Games”, which later became the “Parallel
Games” and grew to include other disabilities.
By 1952, more than 130 international
competitors had entered the Stoke Mandeville
Games. As the annual event continued to grow,
the ethos and efforts by all those involved started
to impress the organisers of the Olympic Games
and members of the international community.
At the 1956 Stoke Mandeville Games, Guttmann
was awarded the Sir Thomas Fearnley Cup by
the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
for his meritorious achievement in service to
the Olympic movement through the social and
human value derived from wheelchair sports.
His vision of an international games, the
Guttmann
presenting gold
medal to Tony
South at the
1968 Summer
Paralympics in
Tel Aviv
equivalent of
the Olympic
Games themselves,
was realised in
1960 when the
International Stoke
Mandeville Games were
held alongside the official
1960 Summer Olympics in
Rome. Known at the time as the 9th
Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games,
and organised with the support of the World
Federation of Ex-servicemen (an International
Working Group on Sport for the Disabled),
they are now recognised as the first Paralympic
Games. (The term “Paralympic Games” was
retroactively applied by the IOC in 1984.)
In 1961, Guttmann founded the British Sports
Association for the Disabled, which would later
become known as the English Federation of
Disability Sport.
Later life
In 1961, Guttmann founded the International
Medical Society of Paraplegia, now the
International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS); he was
the inaugural president of the society, a position
that he held until 1970