The Paralympics started because a Doctor was rehabing so many WWll injuries

The Paralympics started because a Doctor was rehabing so many WWll injuries

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fact of the day, day, day, day day. It's gonna
be Paralympic facts. All this week is the Paralympics kick off.
We've got two silvers and a bronze already. Yeah yeah,

(00:24):
cycling athletics. Something says one of our very talented athletes
said a record at the weekend too. How a good
time in the Paralympics. But the Paralympics is I thought
for the first day of the Paralympics. Facts this week,
We've got a lot the history of the Paralympics and
how it started well. Doctor Ludwig Goutzman was a Jewish

(00:47):
doctor that escaped Germany just before World War Two and
at the behest of the British government, he opened a
spinal injury center at a hospital called the Stoke made
for Hospital for a rehab of World War two veterans.
They were coming back with injuries. World War One, a
lot of injuries sustained dead. That's medical advances meant that

(01:12):
a lot more people were surviving war and having life
changing injuries, amputations, all manner of things, spinal injuries everything.
So in nineteen forty four he set up a spinal
injuries center and at the time he said, when it
got to a certain part these men, the best rehab
for them was sports light versions of sports, but they

(01:33):
didn't want to go home and do the same. You
know what it's like when you go to the physio
and they're like, when did you go home to do
this stretch for a day? My life? You do it
until it stops hurting, and then you're like, I will
never do that again, and then the injury comes back
because you didn't do it. And this guy found out
that Ludwig Gutman found out that if you gave men
sports that they had played previously or were familiar with,

(01:54):
they would do them more regularly for their rehab. But
adapted versions, yeah, adapted version. So Bulay nineteen forty eight,
the opening ceremony of the London nineteen forty Olympic Games,
Goodman the Doctor organized the first competition for wheelchair athletes,
not as part of the Olympics, but just to coincide
with the opening of the Olympics. Yeah, sixteen injured servicemen

(02:16):
and women took part in archery from wheelchairs. Okay, Yeah,
So then it wasn't until nineteen sixty that the first
official Paralympic Games took place before that ever, known as
the Stoke Madeville Games, named after the hospital where the
rehab unit was set up. Yeah, and the games mostly
happened on the grounds of the hospital, things like archery,
et cetera. But in nineteen sixty the first Paralympic Games

(02:37):
took place four hundred athletes from twenty three countries and
it all was off the back of how many countries
had servicemen and women after World War II with altering injuries. Wow.
That meant that they couldn't compete on an equal playing
field with those able bodied athletes. Yeah, but wanted to
and so continued to partake in the sport. And that's

(03:00):
how the Paralympics started up. Oh gosh, And in nineteen
seventy six the first Winter Paralympics Games took place in Sweden.
So great that I always want to winter takes a
little bit longer to get but it did happen, everybody.
So today's fact of the day is the Paralympics started
because a doctor was rehabbing so many people with injuries

(03:24):
after World War two.