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Thursday, September 08, 2016 7:51:47 AM
Out of the horrors of war come accounts of resilience — physical, mental and spiritual — and the life of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann is a fine example.
The United States basketball team scored against the Netherlands in July 1955. Credit Fred Ramage/Keystone, via Getty Images
He is the founder of the Paralympics, a competition for disabled athletes that is underway in Rio de Janeiro (2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., NBCSN). They are held in the same city as the Olympics, though the sporting events aren’t related. Paralympics simply signifies “parallel” games.
When Guttmann was a teenager in World War I-era Germany, he was a volunteer attendant at a hospital, where he watched as a paralyzed young miner with a broken back deteriorated and died within weeks.
Soon after, he went to medical school and became a well-regarded neurologist. That helped Guttmann, who was Jewish, escape to England in 1939, six years after Hitler and the Nazi Party took power.
Drawing on his experience as a hospital orderly gave him the belief that more could be done for disabled British soldiers. Dr. Guttmann used competitive games to encourage veterans with spinal cord injuries and amputated limbs to get out of confinement.
The competition was first held in a hospital to coincide with the 1948 London Games, and it blossomed into the Paralympics, which now feature about 4,350 athletes from more than 160 countries.
Dr. Guttmann helped give rise to a new group of athletes pushing the boundaries of the body and mind. Today, competitors like Tatyana McFadden, who could leave the Rio Paralympics with seven gold medals, inspire us.
The United States basketball team scored against the Netherlands in July 1955. Credit Fred Ramage/Keystone, via Getty Images
He is the founder of the Paralympics, a competition for disabled athletes that is underway in Rio de Janeiro (2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., NBCSN). They are held in the same city as the Olympics, though the sporting events aren’t related. Paralympics simply signifies “parallel” games.
When Guttmann was a teenager in World War I-era Germany, he was a volunteer attendant at a hospital, where he watched as a paralyzed young miner with a broken back deteriorated and died within weeks.
Soon after, he went to medical school and became a well-regarded neurologist. That helped Guttmann, who was Jewish, escape to England in 1939, six years after Hitler and the Nazi Party took power.
Drawing on his experience as a hospital orderly gave him the belief that more could be done for disabled British soldiers. Dr. Guttmann used competitive games to encourage veterans with spinal cord injuries and amputated limbs to get out of confinement.
The competition was first held in a hospital to coincide with the 1948 London Games, and it blossomed into the Paralympics, which now feature about 4,350 athletes from more than 160 countries.
Dr. Guttmann helped give rise to a new group of athletes pushing the boundaries of the body and mind. Today, competitors like Tatyana McFadden, who could leave the Rio Paralympics with seven gold medals, inspire us.
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