Annual Paraplegic Games At Stoke Mandeville

Anglia Television: Report on the Paraplgic Games at Stoke Mandeville Stadium. Interview with competitors and Sir Ludwig Guttman, founder of the Games.

Shot of the Stoke Mandeville Stadium building. Camera zooms out to show people in wheelchairs on the grass in front of the stadium. A disabled person competes in a game of shotput. Shot of someone in a wheelchair throwing a javelin. Camera zooms in on the target drawn on the grass with the javelins sticking out of the ground. People in wheelchairs compete in a game of archery. Shot of a Wheelchair Basketball game. Reporter Chris Young interviews a member of the association who says that there is a change in policy as the government are happy to see multi-racial teams, provided people are selected on merit. He feels the team is much stronger for being multi-racial as it gives people equal chances. He feels strongly that the paraplegic sports team is a part of the sports association. He hopes that in the future other sports such as football and rugby will have multi-racial teams. He says that they look forward to going to Canada next year to the Paraplegic Olympics and hopes to send their biggest ever team of 45 athletes which will also be a multi-racial team. Shot of a man throwing a javelin. Shot of people competing in archery followed by a shot of the targets. Interview with one of the archers. He talks about his disability caused by breaking his back in a car accident. He then talks about his taking up archery. Interview with another member of the team who talks about the mining accident which left him disabled and how much sport has changed his life. Another man talks about how the paraplegic games has allowed him to gain a new interest in life, meet new people, travel and has led to him becoming a top sportsman. Shot of the Paralympics logo on the stadium building. Shot of a woman throwing a shot put. Chris Young interviews Sir Ludwig Guttman, founder of the Paralympic Games and Spinal Cord Injuries Unit Director, who talks about how important the games are for paraplegics both from a physical and psychological point of view. He states that the most important part is the social integration of paralysed people into society. He stresses that these games involve real sport and is a professional competition. He talks about the outstanding achievements of those that would have been considered outcasts of society just 20 years earlier. Shot of an archery competition followed by someone throwing a javelin and then shot put. The camera pans along the field and shows the archery competition.

Keywords

Athletes; Athletics; Athletics Stadium; Archery; Competition; Disabled Athletes; Paraplegia; Paraplegic; Paraplegic Games; Shotput; Sports; Wheelchairs; Race; Racism; Multi culturalism

Background Information

International Stoke Mandeville Games were the forerunner of the Paralympic Games. The competition has been formerly known as the World Wheelchair and Amputee Games, the Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games, the Stoke Mandeville Games, the World Wheelchair Games, and in the 1960s and 1970s was often referred to as the Wheelchair Olympics. The Games were originally held in 1948 by neurologist Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who organized a sporting competition involving World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital rehabilitation facility in Aylesbury, England, taking place concurrently with the first post-war Summer Olympics in London.