That the Paralympics rose out of such a dark place, from the ashes of the Second World War, wounded men and a fugitive from the Nazis, says much. From its humble beginnings on the lawns of a Buckinghamshire hospital it has become one of the great global sporting events, shining a light on how sport, and Paralympic sport in particular, can be a force for good.
On 29 July 1948 at Stoke Mandeville, 16 men and women were pushed from their wards in cumbersome wheelchairs to take part in an archery competition. It was the same day as the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.
That’s where it began, and this is what it’s become. On 28 August, 4,400 athletes from around the world will gather in Paris for the 18th summer Paralympics to compete for 549 gold medals across 22 sports. There will be athletes in wheelchairs, there will be athletes who are blind, athletes with cerebral palsy, athletes who run on blades. Channel 4, the Games broadcaster, like to call them the Super Humans and when you watch the blade-runners compete in the 100m, the blue ribband event of any Games, it’s impossible to disagree. But they’re also a bit of everything.
Martin Perry from Drumchapel in Scotland was born missing both hands and one leg. He started playing table tennis as a boy, his bat strapped to one arm with a swirl of Velcro. He’ll compete in his first Paralympics in Paris.
Watching a warm-up session in the swimming pool at a Paralympics is an education in… well, what exactly? There is every size and shape there, from all over the world. I watched a Chinese swimmer with missing limbs stop the clock installed at the end of lanes by swimming into it headfirst.
Inspiring is the word I kept being drawn to– and I really did find it just that – but there are many athletes who’d disagree. Before the London Games, I was repeatedly told ‘just write about us as you’d write about any athlete.’
Natalie du Toit lost a leg in a scooter accident. She won 13 Paralympic golds in the pool. “It’s not inspiring, it’s about showing people it is possible,” she said. “Hopefully, people go out there and live life to the fullest, whether it be disabled people, old, young, whatever. Every day you can learn. I was always given the advice that the day you stop learning is the day that you will die.”
Aled Sion Davies, a multiple gold medallist who competes with a prosthetic right leg, talks of watching a young girl run across London’s Olympic Park in 2012 wearing shorts, two prosthetic limbs on show. Davies said he didn’t dare wear shorts until he was 17.
London 2012 is seen by many as a pivotal moment in the Paralympic movement, and for the wider recognition in this country of people with disabilities. From the beginning, Britain has played a full part in getting where we are today (and there is, of course, plenty more road to be travelled).
Sport both matters and matters not a jot. Doctor Ludwig Guttmann knew that.
It begins with him. Guttmann is one of the good guys; a German Jew who’d got out just in time, arriving in Britain in 1939 having already helped friends and family escape Nazi Germany. He was an expert in spinal injuries and began work at Stoke Mandeville in 1944. By 1948 he’d his hands full with young men with shattered lives, young men who’d gone to war and now faced life in a wheelchair.
Guttmann wanted to show them they still had everything to live for – he was also a believer in the worth of sport for both physical and mental health – so, with the Olympics down the road, came up with an idea for his patients, a Wheelchair Games.
I wonder who they were, those first 16? Did they take part in the archery competition enthusiastically? Were there some who’d rather have stayed in their rooms? And who won? What happened to them? Did it make a difference?
When I was a sports journalist, I was always fascinated by the back story – how did they get here? And no event I’ve covered produced back stories like the Paralympics.
There’s Achmat Hassiem. I spoke to him ahead of London 2012. He’d lost a leg in a shark attack off Muizenberg beach on the Cape peninsula – lost a leg because he distracted the shark to give his younger brother time to get out of the water. His actions saved his brother’s life. Achmat struggled to deal with his new life until a visit from Natalie du Toit. He got back in the water – not just the pool, but, once he’d dealt with the fear, into the sea as well.
There’s Bradley Snyder. I was with a couple of other journalists in the corridor leading from the London 2012 swimming pool when we spoke to him. He’d just won gold, a year to the day from being blinded while trying to diffuse an explosive device planted by the Taliban in Afghanistan. His eyes were surgically removed and replaced with prosthetics. He was softly spoken. “I don’t point any fingers,” he said. “I was doing a risky job and I take full responsibility for what happened and that’s why I've been able to be successful over the past year because I don’t blame anyone and I haven’t victimised myself.”
There’s Martine Wright, a sitting volleyballer who lost her legs in a terrorist attack in London. She’d stayed in bed for five minutes longer that morning – if she’d got straight up when her alarm went off, she wouldn’t have been on the train with the bomber.
There’s more, many more. Those born the way they are and those who’ve become the way they are. So many stories. So many different lives.
Those words from Natalie du Toit again… “It’s about showing people it is possible. Hopefully, people go out there and live life to the fullest, whether it be disabled people, old, young, whatever.”
The Paralympics begin in Paris on 28 August – give it a watch.
