How a German neurosurgeon created the Paralympics in an English village

The modern Olympic games started in Athens, but the Paralympic games had an altogether different start – born not on Mount Olympus, but in the small English village of Stoke Mandeville.

It's a quiet little place, 60 kilometers north-west of central London, with a population of around 6,000. But in the parking lot of the new sports center, visitors can see remnants of the original athletes' village from a literally game-changing historical event.

The idea of a 'parallel' games was the inspiration of Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a neurosurgeon who came to the UK shortly before the outbreak of World War II, having been stripped of his ability to practice medicine in Germany by the Nazi government in 1938.

"He came to this country as a German-Jewish refugee, arriving here in 1939 with his young family, and he was invited by the government to set up the spinal unit, in preparation for the D-Day landings," says Vicky Hope-Walker, CEO of the National Paralympic Heritage Trust.

It was the world's first specialist center for people with spinal cord injuries. Guttmann revolutionized treatments, including turning patients in bed to prevent bed sores and inventing new types of catheters to stop urinary tract infections.

"Up until that point people who broke their back would really live somewhere between six weeks and two years," says Hope-Clark. "So it was completely transformative - prior to him people were really left to die."

Inspired by observing the positive impact his patients had after playing a game similar to polo, he created a competition for the hospital to run alongside the Olympic games. The first games featured 16 wheelchair athletes, 14 men and two women, coinciding with the opening of the London Olympics in 1948.

Martin McElhatton OBE is the Chief Execuitve of WheelPower, a Stoke Mandeville-based charity which has for over 75 years supported athletes with physical impairments to participate in sport. McElhatton himself represented Great Britain on the 1984 Paraylmpic basketball team.

"Guttman's vision was to host the games in the same place in the same year when the Olympics were held," says McElhatton. "It grew and grew, and in 1952 some Dutch veterans came across and started the first International Stoke Mandeville games," he says.

"And then by the ninth Stoke Mandeville games it ended up being in Rome, where they had the first use of the word paralympic."

The games were still often referred to as the International Stoke Mandeville Games up until 1984, when they returned to the village after funding issues meant they couldn't be held in America alongside that year's LA Olympics.

"It made a big impact, local people volunteered their gardens and their homes to host the competitors and the opening ceremony was in fact opened by Prince Charles," says Simon Stiel, one of the volunteers at the National Paralymic Heritage Trust's museum.

The museum attracts visitors from all over the world to learn more about Dr Guttmann's story and the history of the games.

"I think it is a pilgrimage for many many people, not just those who knew him, but those who were involved in the movement, we get people from all over the world visiting us to soak up what happened," says Hope-Clark.

"It is a really really special place, it's not a landmark place like Mount Olympus but what happened here is possibly more remarkable in changing society and how society viewed disability."

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