On the day of the opening of the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, Stoke Mandeville Hospital organised a sports competition for British World War Two veteran patients with spinal cord injuries. The games were held again at the same location in 1952, and Dutch veterans took part alongside the British, making it the first international competition of its kind. These Stoke Mandeville Games have been described as the precursors of the Paralympic Games. The Paralympics were subsequently officialised as a quadrennial event tied to the Olympic Games, and the first official Paralympic Games, no longer open solely to war veterans, were held in Rome in 1960.
Stoke Mandeville Hospital is a large National Health Service hospital within Aylesbury Urban Area to the south of the town of Aylesbury, near the village of Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire. It is part of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.
The hospital's National Spinal Injuries Centre is one of the largest specialist spinal units in the world, and the pioneering rehabilitation work carried out there by Sir Ludwig Guttmann led to the development of the Paralympic Games. Mandeville, one of the official mascots for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in London, was named in honour of the hospital's contribution to Paralympic sports.
So, the Paralympic Games started at a horrible, socialist, at the mercy of bureaucrats hospital!
Stoke Mandeville is still a centre of excellence for spinal cord injuries. People involved in accidents or suffering from neurologic illnesses don't need to sell their houses in order to have the best possible treatment. The British get the best and don't pay a penny.
Fancy that...
