These days the Paralympic Games are being held in Rio de Janeiro. In the blog we have dedicated several entries to significant events of the Olympic Games that stood out at the time for historical, sporting or humanitarian reasons. In the case of the Paralympic Games, each participant has behind a personal story of strength, overcoming and admirable mentality to make a place for themselves in a society accustomed to the cult of the body and that tends to look the other way before any person who does not meet the standards. of beauty established.
It's no wonder the man who fought for para athletes to have an event on par with the Olympics. have an extraordinary and novelistic biography behind it.
Ludwig Guttmann was born into a Jewish family in 1899 in Tost, a town in the German mining region of Silesia. When he was 18 years old, he volunteered to collaborate in the local hospital that cared for miners who suffered accidents at work. There he had occasion to observe how a young and burly miner who arrived after an accident with a broken back and paralysis from the waist down was written off as a hopeless case, in plaster and abandoned in a corner with almost no treatment; the young man died a month later. In a later interview, Guttmann confessed that the specific case of that young miner and the assumption by the doctors that there was no possible treatment for him marked him especially.
He decided to study medicine and graduated from the University of Breslau in 1923. He wanted to specialize in paediatrics, but unable to find a free place to practice in this field, he ended up accepting a job as a neurologist and neurosurgeon. There he gained a solid reputation that allowed him to avoid the first attacks against the Jews perpetrated after the rise to power of the Nazis.
It was this reputation that allowed him to have several offers to work outside of Germany and that finally made him decide to escape the untenable situation of the Jews in his country and move to the United Kingdom. United. Guttmann arrived in Dover with his wife and his two children in March 1939, eventually settling in Oxford. It was time; only six months later the Second World War broke out, during which the Nazis designed the 'Final Solution' that led to the extermination of millions of Jews. His adventures until he reached England are worthy of a spy novel... but that's another story.
In 1943 the British government asked Guttmann if he would be willing to take the lead in a project aimed at dealing with the increasing number of cases of soldiers who as a result of war injuries they had suffered varying degrees of paralysis. After assuring himself that he would be free to apply his own medical criteria, Guttmann accepted the position and took charge of a hospital for paraplegics in Stoke Mandeville, which was opened on February 1, 1944.
Although the hospital initially had only 26 beds, this was a huge step forward for the treatment of paraplegia, which a few years before had been considered little more than a waste of time. Apart from fighting to recover his patients, one of the greatest tasks undertaken by Guttmann was to try to reverse the general idea that existed both in society and among the families of the injured that they faced a future without any expectation and without the possibility of returning. to occupy a position in society.
Guttmann also had to face the general opinion of the medical profession, which did not understand why he left his lucrative activity in Oxford to embark on the complicated and unattractive task of taking charge of the project dealing with spinal cord injuries and paralysis in Stoke Mandeville.
The doctor realized that as important as working on the physical recovery of his patients was working on their emotional and mental recovery, convincing them that once their medical treatment was over they could return to their life in society and have a role within it.
One of the revolutionary measures that Guttmann included as part of his treatment was not to limit himself to putting his patients in plaster and keeping them in a bed (which inevitably led to muscle atrophy and problems derived from the lack of blood circulation), but rather encourage them to perform physical rehabilitation exercises. These exercises ranged from archery to typing to carpentry to watch repair.
At one point, Guttmann had the idea of organizing an archery competition between two teams of disabled patients from the clinic in Stoke Mandeville. He set the date of July 28, 1948, precisely the same day that the opening ceremony of the first Olympic Games after the Second World War took place in London. That day 16 people from two teams held an archery competition from their wheelchair.
It is not clear whether or not Guttmann chose this date on purpose, but the fact is that the archery competition for disabled athletes was held on July 28, 1948 in Stoke Mandeville and the winning team was awarded the corresponding trophy.
The importance of this modest but significant event was to demonstrate that not only athletes with perfect bodies could hold sports competitions; Little by little, more activities and contests were organized for people with disabilities.
When in 1949 Stoke Mandeville set out to repeat the experience of the previous year, they found that more hospitals and participants wanted to take part in the sporting festival that became known as the Games. of Stoke Mandeville. Opening the competition that year, Guttmann spoke the following words:"I predict that there will come a time when this sporting event will become international and that the Stoke Mandeville Games will be the equivalent of the Olympic Games for people with disabilities."
Guttmann's first prediction did not take long to come true; in 1952 a Dutch hospital requested to be able to send participants to the Stoke Mandeville Games. In the following years athletes arrived from Canada, Australia, Finland, Egypt, Israel... The competition became an annual event to be held in the month of July.
The second wish of our protagonist came when the National Institute for the Prevention of Accidents at Work in Italy asked not only if they could participate in the 1960 edition, but if they could organize it and that be held on Italian soil. It was also no coincidence that the Olympic Games were held in Rome that year. A week after the completion of these, the first edition of the Stoke Mandeville Games outside Great Britain was held on September 18, 1960. 400 athletes from 21 countries participated, staying in the same facilities as the Olympic Games athletes. Archery, wheelchair basketball, athletics, darts, billiards, swimming, table tennis, pentathlon and wheelchair fencing were held.
The greatest success of the Rome edition of the Stoke Mandeville Games (which has become known as the first Paralympic Games) was not the organization and participation (which were a great success), but the message of hope and possibilities for the future received by people with paraplegia and spinal injuries around the world. What started as a summer archery competition between 16 people in an English hospital had become a world-class event.
As of 1976, the Games were accepting people with other types of disabilities, both physical and intellectual. Since 1984 they have been officially called the 'Paralympic Games'. Ludwig Guttmann's initial idea of promoting the physical rehabilitation activity of his paraplegic patients and holding an archery competition among them has become a formidable cry of hope and illusion for thousands of people around the world who overcome every day to compete in the Paralympic Games.
Although over time this gave rise to unpleasant picaresques such as that of the Spanish team for the intellectually disabled that won gold in basketball in Sydney 2000 and was dispossessed of the medal after being denounced that a good part of his players were not disabled, I prefer to keep the image of Antonio Rebollo, the first Paralympic athlete who had the honor of lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. He went to Barcelona 1992 and he did it… shooting a flaming arrow from his bow. Unfortunately, Ludwig Guttmann did not live to see this moment. He passed away on March 18, 1980.
Source British Paralympic Association