Last Updated on 25/09/2023 by Crip Life
Student journalist Peter Langton shares his documentary Para Legacy, which looks at the history of the Paralympic games.
My documentary Para Legacy was part of my last module in MA Sport Broadcast Journalism at Solent University and was created because I know people have heard of the Paralympics but I don’t think people know the actual history of the Games, and as this year is the 75th anniversary of the first Games at Stoke Mandeville back in 1948, this is the right time to show people the past.
History of the Paralympic Games
The person behind the Games was a German neurosurgeon called Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who when World War Two broke out came to Oxford in 1939, and he was working on research, which was not what he was doing back home but it was through that work that he came to the attention of the Government, and thus invited Guttmann to set up a spinal cord unit in Stoke Mandeville in 1944.
Back then, patients who had spinal cord injuries wouldn’t last from 6 months to two years and would die within that period. However, Guttmann was insistent on doing rehabilitation his way, and therefore patients would go on to live a full healthy life with spinal cord injuries. A big part of that was sport.
Guttmann would, in 1948, put on a Games, specifically for spinal cord patients with sports that were adapted for them to play, like archery and netball (later basketball). He opened the Games on the first day of the Olympics in London. From that point on, he opened the Games up to international spinal cord units to come to Stoke Mandeville to complete with their patients, and so this was up until 1960 when they went to Rome to complete, only when the Olympics ended, they could start, and was known from thereon as the Paralympics.
You might think the Paralympics always were alongside the Olympics structure-wise, but it wasn’t always like that. From 1968 to 1988, the host cities wouldn’t want to host the Paralympics, so had to be moved elsewhere.
Para Legacy documentary
To make sure the documentary has some power to send the message I wanted it to pass on, I had to make sure that the people featured were knowledgeable and were the people who are connected to the Paralympics. I had two contributors from Canada.
One was David Legg, who was part of a sporting background in the Canadian para-sport world, and he worked under the first and founding President of the International Paralympic Committee.
The other was Dr. Robert Steadward who was a major coup to get in, as he had met Guttmann personally, and after Guttmann died in 1980, Steadward created the International Paralympic Committee, to carry on Guttmann’s work and values for future Games.
The documentary also looks into how the Paralympics look in the media and society with ParalympicGB podcast host Andy Stevenson, lecturers Dr Ian Brittain in Coventry, Dr Emma Pullen and Jessica Noske-Turner in London, with some current Paralympians sharing their experiences. Vicky Hope-Walker and Sam Brady of the National Paralympic Heritage Trust and Martin McElhatton OBE of WheelPower also feature.
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