The National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT) was established in July 2015 to ‘enlighten and inspire future generations by celebrating, cherishing and bringing the Paralympic Heritage and its stories of human endeavour to life’.
The Paralympic Movement is a story with unique British involvement. It not only shows how disability sport developed but captures the prowess, courage and endeavour of hundreds of individuals beginning with Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a German Jewish refugee working in Stoke Mandeville from 1943. Guttmann’s holistic approach to treating spinal injury patients kept them alive, fit, active and ultimately, in his words ‘tax payers’. It shows how one man can literally ‘change the world’, as his medical practice became internationally renowned.
The athletes provide inspiring role models for all people, and have a particular resonance for the ten million disabled people in the UK who have few celebrity or historic role models to emulate. The UK has continued to play a key leadership role in the development of the Paralympic Movement, reflected in phenomenal successes since London 2012, in Sochi, Rio and Pyeongchang.
Without the NPHT the heritage was at risk, being scattered and stored inappropriately with the potential to be lost. It is an internationally unique collection with the ability to inspire and break down barriers to disability, as well as feed growing public and academic interest. Finally it is a wonderful story for which the
British Public and all involved in it should be rightfully proud.
