The Paralympic/Paraolympic Games – the originator, vision, and development
On 28 August, the 17th edition of the Paralympic Games began in Paris. 4,400 athletes from 182 countries have entered the competition. Until 8 September—the last day of the Games—competitions in 22 disciplines will be held, and 549 sets of medals will be handed. The slogan of this year’s both Olympic and Paralympic Games is “Games Wide Open.”
What connects the vision of the Paralympics and our University? Ludwig Guttmann, a doctor from Wrocław.
Since the revival of the concept of Olympic Games by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, this competition became an event of special meaning, going beyond the strictly sport framework and entering the area reserved for politics and high culture (Senn 1999; Wojtaszyn 2011). Today, it is the biggest and most important sport event, it belongs to the most recognisable events in the world, and attracts the attention of millions of people. Sport activity during modern Olympic Games is connected to additional elements, the most distinctive one being the so-called Olympic ethos—propaganda of humanistic and humanitarian values, vehicle for various civilizational and cultural assets—and peacekeeping imagery. Intensive promotional campaigns and their multifaceted influence emphasising the significance and uniqueness of the event are an important part of the Games. The spectacular nature of the event is reflected by elaborate opening and closing ceremonies, which are paraartistic and parasport performances (Kosiewicz 2007), whose importance and imagery are widely commented and discussed—as it was, for example, in the case of this year’s Games.
The modern Olympic vision would not be complete without including all the athletes, including contenders with disabilities. This is why the Paralympic Games, which have been organised since 1960, became the complement of this vision. The originator of the idea of sport competition between people with disabilities and Paralympic events was Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a doctor from Wrocław. Guttmann was born on 3 July 1899 in Toszek, then called Tost in Upper Silesia, as the oldest of four children in a wealthy Jewish family. When he was three years old, the family moved to Królewska Huta (Königshütte, later Chorzów), where the young Guttmann passed his matura exam in a humanistic middle school in 1917. After the exam, as World War I was nearing its end, he was serving an apprenticeship in a hospital, where he had an opportunity to take care of disabled soldiers. Meeting a soldier with a spinal injury, who died in agony soon after, impacted his further life choices (Collmann, Dubinski, Eisenberg 2017). In 1918, he began medical studies at the University of Wrocław and later continued them in Freiburg and Würzburg. During his studies, he engaged in activities of a fraternity of German students of Jewish faith and a German-Jewish tourist and sightseeing association “Kameraden,” of which he was a co-founder (Walk 1988). In 1923, he received his Doctor of Medicine degree, having written his dissertation on trachea malignancies. After studies, he came back to Wrocław (then called Breslau), where he worked with a world-famous psychiatrist, neurologist, and pioneer in neurosurgery prof. Otfried Foerster, who had been treating the leader of the Soviet revolution, Vladimir Lenin, from 1922 to 1924 (Museum Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego 1924). In 1928, Guttmann left for Hamburg, where he had been offered to establish a neurosurgical ward in a local hospital, but he came back to Wrocław a year later upon prof. Foerster’s request and continued his career by his side. He received his postdoctoral degree in neurology in 1930. In 1933, in accordance with Nuremberg acts, he was forced by Nazis to cease practicing medicine in Aryan hospitals, which made him take up the position of neurologist in the Jewish Hospital in Wrocław, where he was elected hospital administrator in 1937. During the Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, he saved 63 patients, who took shelter in the hospital, from the Gestapo (Collmann, Dubinski, Eisenberg 2017). Similarly to other Jews, his passport was confiscated and he was forbidden from travelling, yet, in December 1938, he obtained an order from the Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop to get to Lisbon to help treat the dictator of Portugal Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s friend. On his way back, he was granted permission for a two-day stay in Great Britain. There, he contacted the British Society for the Protection of Science and Learning and was offered a scholarship by them. Then, he decided to emigrate with his wife and two children. The Guttmanns left Germany on 14 March 1939 (NPHT 2024).
During his stay in England, Guttmann filled a post at the Oxford University, in Radcliffe Infirmary, and St Hugh’s College Military Hospital for Head Injuries, and his wife established Women’s International Zionist Organisation (NPHT 2024). In 1943, Guttmann became the director of newly opened National Spinal Injuries Centre in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Southern England. He took the post on the condition that he would be allowed to treat patients by his own rules, which differed from the accepted medical norms. He essentially changed the approach to spinal injuries, which had previously been considered hopeless, by trying to cure them, reduce inconveniences linked to them, and, primarily, rehabilitate. An important element of his method was physical activity. Thereby, new sport disciplines for patients emerged, including polo on wheelchairs (which, however, was banned due to the brutality of it), archery, volleyball, and basketball (Neuhäuser 2021).
1948 was a turning point of realising the Paralympic vision. The first post-war Olympic Games were held in London that year, and about 50 kilometres from London, in Stoke Mandeville, patients from Guttmann’s hospital had an opportunity to compete with patients from another hospital in archery. Merely 15 contenders participated in the event, but a decision was made to hold it recurrently. In the next year’s competition called the Stoke Mandeville Games, the number of participants increased to 60 patients from 5 hospitals and they competed in archery along with basketball. In 1950, the competition was held as part of the British Sport Festival in London, and the contenders were able to present their skills in front of an audience of ten thousand (Neuhäuser 2021). The 1950 competition provided the needed publicity and interest of international public opinion. Next editions saw a constant increase in the numbers of participants; in 1952, Dutch contenders joined the event, and the number of disciplines grew: apart from archery, volleyball, and basketball, there were competitions in fencing, weightlifting, billiards, and swimming (Neuhäuser 2021).
Ludwig Guttmann engaged all the time in developing the competition and he was recognised by various assemblies. In 1956, International Olympic Committee (IOC), awarded Sir Thomas Fearnley Cup to him for his contributions to the Olympic movement, and in 1966, he was knighted by the British queen (NPHT 2024).
Finally, the 1st Summer Paralympic Games were held in Rome from 18 to 25 September 1960. 400 contenders representing 23 countries participated in them. 57 competitions in 8 disciplines took place. The significance of the event was emphasised by the fact that it was officially declared open by the Italian Minister for Public Health Camillo Giardina (Paralympic.org 2024). The Winter Paralympic Games were held from 21 to 28 February 1976 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. Since the 1988 Games in Seoul, the Paralympic competition has taken place in the same city as the Olympic Games.
The original name of the competition referred to the words paraplegic (an adjective relating to spinal injuries) and Olympic. As the variety of contenders and their disabilities extended, a Greek preposition para (near) became a proper referent. The official names Paraolympic Games and Paralympic Games were initially used interchangeably, but the latter version became the dominant one over time. Uniformisation of the official name gradually took place in other languages as well. In February 2023, the Polish Paraolympic Committee changed its name to the Polish Paralympic Committee and recommended using this form to refer to Games of people with disabilities. The implemented change was supposed to provide a homogenous international identification and better global recognizability (Górecki 2022). The Council for the Polish Language addressed this change in a negative way, calling it incorrect and inconsistent “with the Polish linguistic system, as well as the tradition” (Rada Języka Polskiego 2024). However, Chair of the Council prof. Katarzyna Kłosińska ultimately explained that taking into account international conditions we need to consider both forms to be correct: “It has to be acknowledged that both forms are correct: the first (traditional) one is socially accepted, and the second (new) one has institutional acceptance” (after Kruczyńska 2024).
Polish representation debuted at the Paralympic Games in Heidelberg in 1972. 20 Polish athletes entered the competition and won 33 medals, impressively finishing sixth in the medal table (Duński 2000). Since then, Polish sportsmen and sportswomen have been succeeding in each edition. 84 Polish contenders (41 women and 43 men) participate in the Paris edition, which started a few days ago. Among them, 9 athletes represent Lower Silesian clubs: Voivodship Sport Association of the Disabled Start Wrocław (8 people) and Sport Club Badminton Kobierzyce (1 person). They will present their skills in 4 disciplines: badminton, canoeing, athletics, and swimming (Organisty 2024).
Article by: Dariusz Wojtaszyn
Prof. Dariusz Wojtaszyn, historian and political scientist, professor at the Department of Contemporary History and head of the Research Laboratory for the History of German and European Sport at the Willy Brandt Centre for German and European Studies at the University of Wrocław.
We would like to remind that you can order WUWr’s latest book entitled Piłka nożna na celowniku polityki (eng. Football in the crosshairs of politics), edited by Professor Dariusz Wojtaszyn. More: https://uwr.edu.pl/en/mondays-with-wuwr-18/
We also encourage you to read the article entitled Peace(less) Race and other cycling races in post-war Poland https://uwr.edu.pl/en/peaceless-race-and-other-cycling-races-in-post-war-poland/ and to buy the book Toksofilos. Szkoła łucznictwa w dwóch księgach (eng. Toxophilus. School of archery in two volumes.) It is a Polish edition translated by dr hab. Michał Surma and dr Katarzyna Byłów and dedicated to Piotr Gonet—an excellent Polish archer and community worker, originator of the Wrocław Traditional Archery Centre.
Translated by Jakub Dziubek (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
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Works Cited:
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Eisenberg Ulrike, Collmann Hartmut, Dubinski Daniel, Verraten – Vertrieben – Vergessen
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