Every four years, we get to experience the truly remarkable.
The Summer Olympics and the Paralympics show us human beings achieving what seems impossible, pushing their bodies further and further in a big to win bronze, silver or gold medals.
The people involved do incredible work to set new Olympic records and world records in their field, showing what both able-bodied and disabled athletes can do.
It is the Paralympics that we’re particularly focused on here, with Team GB often doing better than much larger countries in spite of the small pool of athletes to choose from. The obvious question to ask is why.
The Spiritual Birthplace of the Paralympic Games
When it comes to the Olympic Games, every knows that Ancient Greece is where we have to look to find the inspiration for what people watch nowadays. That isn’t true about the Paralympics, however. It is post-war Britain and, more specifically, the Stoke Mandeville Hospital that can be considered the original inspiration for the Paralympic movement.
When the Paralympic Games took place for the first time in Rome in 1960, that was actually the ninth year of the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games, which was a competition created by Dr Ludwig Guttmann to coincide with the London Olympics of 1948.
@spinal_injuries Paris 2024 Paralympics heritage flame lighting ceremony at Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire 🔥 Celebrating the history of the Games at the birthplace of the movement. #paralympics #stokemandeville ♬ French music style, accordion, waltz – arachang
The Stoke Mandeville Games actually still exist under the moniker of the IWAS World Games, aimed specifically at amputee athletes and those that use wheelchairs. There is little question, though, that the Paralympic Games grew out of those same Stoke Mandeville Games but looked more broadly at other disabilities.
In other words, Britain has a relationship with the Paralympics that no other nation can boast, so it is perhaps not all that surprising that British athletes are better-placed to take on the challenge that is is the Paralympic Games. There is also, more important, more funding for British athletes because of that.
Strong Funding
Since the inaugural games in Rome in 1960, Great Britain has never been outside of the top five positions on the medal table at the Paralympics. A big part of the reason for that is the decent funding source that exists for Paralympians, allowing them to concentrate on improving their training and their work.
The National Lottery introduced funding for Paralympic athletes ahead of the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000 and have continued to fund people ever since. It meant that by the time the Olympics and Paralympics got underway in Paris in 2024, Team GB boasted 41 Olympic World Champions and 61 Paralympic World Champions.
It’s 300 gold medals for @ParalympicsGB since National Lottery funding was introduced in 1997 👏
Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid’s🥇at the #Paris2024 Paralympic Games secured the milestone 🙌
That’s the impact of @tnluk players funding#ThanksToYou #TNLAthletes pic.twitter.com/ARfnNvIVqV
— National Lottery Good Causes (@LottoGoodCauses) September 6, 2024
One of the key things that has worked in the favour of Paralympic athletes is the fact that the funding is so broad in its nature. Whilst other nations work extremely hard on specific sports, Team GB is able to give funding to numerous different disciplines. At Paris, for example, medals we were in 18 of the 19 different events that an athlete contested.
A squad of 215 headed over the France for the Paralympic Games, with 117 of the athletes returning with a medal. Athletes of all ages and of different levels of establishment won, which we can see by the fact that 37 of the 81 first time Paralympians won a medal.
The Legacy of London 2012
One of the major advantages of hosting a home Games is the ability to put athletics front and centre. The London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games were a huge success, uniting the country in a way that seems impossible in the post-Brexit world of today.
Not only did that put the Paralympics front and centre in the consciousness of the watching public, it also allowed some of the stars of the Games to get a name for themselves. As a result, the Paralympic athletes began to appear on chat shows, radio programmes and more. It meant that they were visible, with representation encouraging others to try various sports.
That can be seen not only in the way in which disabled people began to appear in the mainstream more regularly, but in the likes of comedy shows such as The Last Leg, which began in 2012 and has become one of the most-watched comedy programmes on Channel 4 in the years since.
It is perhaps no surprise that the British Paralympians brought home more gold medals from the Paris Paralympic Games than they had for nearly a century, given the manner in which both funding and access to Paralympic sports increased in the years after the London Games. Now the key is to keep the funding up to make Los Angeles 2026 even more successful.