CHAPTER 35
SPORT
In 1944, very soon after the inception of the Stoke Mandeville Centre, I introduced
sporting activities as an essential part of the medical treatment. I felt that, in a country
where sport in one way or another is part of the life of most people, it would be an omis
sion not to include this important pastime and recreation in the rehabilitation of the
spinal paralysed. The first report on the effect of sport on these patients was published a
year later (Guttmann, 1945). ft was proved that sporting activities were most essential
in the physical readjustment of these patients and in preventing boredom of hospital
life, and above all it paved the way to a fuller and more enjoyable life for these disabled
people. From the physical point of view, sport proved of immense therapeutic value in
restoring the disabled person's strength, co-ordination and endurance. Moreover, sport,
being the most natural form of remedial exercise, was successfully used as a complement
to the conventional methods of physiotherapy to restore activity of mind and self-
confidence in the paralysed. The great advantage of sport over formal remedial exercise
lies in its recreational value, which is a motivating force in the enjoyment of life. Recrea
tion thus becomes an important factor in achieving the psychological equilibrium, so
necessary to the severely disabled person in coming to terms with his physical defect. The
final and probably the noblest aim of sport for the paralysed in a wheelchair is to help
him regain contact with the world around him. By instilling self-discipline, competitive
spirit, self-respect and comradeship, sport restores and develops mental attitudes, that
are essential for any successful social re-integration. Actually, in certain games such as
archery, bowling, snooker and table tennis, the paralysed and amputees are capable of
competing with the able-bodies, and the same applies in swimming for amputees and the
blind. There are many sports which can be adjusted to the paralysed; in fact, the first
team game I introduced in 1944 was wheelchair polo, soon followed by the more suitable
and exciting wheelchair basketball. In due course, other sports followed, such as archery,
skittles, bowling, fencing (both foil and sabre), field events (javelin—distance and pre
cision—shot put and club throwing), weight lifting from the supine position and wheel-
chair racing and slalom. Figs. 251-255 demonstrate some of the sports practised by
paraplegics.
Archery is the ideal sport for strengthening the arm and trunk muscles and improving
respiratory and cardiovascular functions. The pullweight of the bow varies between
36 and 42 Ib for men and 25-38 Ib for women, children, naturally, are using lighter
pullweights. Today, wheelchair archers are competing in the F.I.T.A. Round, the
internationally recognized longest distance in archery (90, 70 and 50 m, each shot with
36 arrows), and several paraplegics have won the F.I.T.A. Star (by scoring more than
1,000 points). Moreover, archery has great fascination, as the archer accomplishes
everything by his own judgement and strength and nothing is mechanized for him.
A combination of darts and archery, called Dartchery, was introduced as a special
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