ABSTRACT
As stated in Chapter 1, the very first Stoke Mandeville Games coincided with the Opening Ceremony for the Fourteenth Olympic Games in London, which Guttmann later claimed to be mere coincidence. However, at the end of the second Stoke Mandeville Games the very next year Dr Guttmann gave a speech in which he made the claim that the Stoke Mandeville Games would one day become recognised as the paraplegic’s equivalent of the Olympic Games. This certainly showed remarkable foresight given that he himself admits that, despite the widely accepted success of the day, the statement was met with very little shared optimism from those gathered in the audience (Guttmann, 1954). It did, however, prompt one of the local papers, the Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News dated 29 July, to print an article under the headline ‘“Olympic Games” of Disabled Men is Born at Stoke’. When the Stoke Mandeville Games first became truly international in 1952 with the participation of a Dutch team, Guttmann used this opportunity to reinforce the Olympic link further when, during his opening speech, he apparently reminded those present that the Olympic Games were in progress in Helsinki and that he hoped that the paraplegic Games, as the author called them, would become as international and widely known as the Olympic Games (Guttmann, 1952).
