Buckinghamshire Day: MPs celebrate county's Paralympic legacy
Politicians across the region paid tribute to Buckinghamshire to mark its role in launching the Paralympics.
Yesterday was Buckinghamshire Day, the date chosen each year to remember the fact that the Paralympic Games begun in Stoke Mandeville.
Before Parliament broke up for the summer, the county’s MPs gathered outside the House of Commons with Parliament’s speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to pay tribute to the county.
Stoke Mandeville Hospital’s grounds was the venue for the first ever Paralympics on July 29, 1948. Now each year on July 29, residents and officials can celebrate Buckinghamshire Day and the county’s status as the birthplace of the Paralympics.
Aylesbury MP, Laura Kyrke-Smith, said she was honoured to mark the area’s history alongside her fellow MPs. Buckingham and Bletchley MP, Callum Anderson, said in his column for this newspaper,that the day marked a chance to celebrate “everything that makes where we live so special”.
Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann is credited with creating the first ever spinal injuries games which would develop into the international competition known around the world today.
He was brought into a leadership role at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1944 to treat servicemen who had sustained spinal cord injuries in World War II.
In 1948, Professor Guttmann began using sport as a key element of rehabilitation programmes and on 29 July 1948 he organised a competition for 16 paralysed men and women to coincide with the opening ceremony of the 1948 Olympic Games in London.
Professor Guttmann received a knighthood in recognition of his contribution to the Paralympics and the ground-breaking techniques in rehabilitation he introduced.