London 2012 Paralympics: Games with a history of grit and triumph

More than two hours had passed since he had come to rest in this spot, a searing pain in his back and a thin jumper providing scant protection against winter’s elements. In his trouser pocket there was a mobile phone, but Tom Aggar was in no hurry to use it.

The 6ft 3in rugby player was nearing the end of his Biological Sciences degree at Warwick University, and a career in the Royal Marines beckoned. It had been a rowdy party and, at one point, he headed to the garden. As he moved from the light of the house to the dark of night he scuffed his foot and tripped, falling 12 feet on to a concrete drive next to a block of flats.

By the time he regained consciousness, Tom knew his life had changed forever. He didn’t need medical confirmation, just time to adjust to the realisation that, at 21, he was paralysed from the waist down. “I had been a lifeguard,” he says. “And, doing biology, I knew what I had done. I didn’t want to call for help as then I would have to accept something pretty bad had happened.”

That was in 2005. Three years later Aggar won gold in the inaugural rowing events at the Paralympic Games in Beijing. Unbeaten in the single scull ever since, he goes for a second Paralympic title later this month.

Aggar will be one of the faces of these Games, not because the public feel sorry for a young man whose life changed in moments, but because he embodies what Paralympic sport in this country is all about: world-class performance.

The 301 athletes who form the ParalympicsGB team at London 2012 are expected to exceed the 42 golds from Beijing, and to consolidate their second-place position in the medal table, behind China. The target is at least 103 medals from 12 different sports.

They will do so in front of sell-out crowds enjoying accessible and integrated venues; and with knowledge and insight provided by sustained and considered media coverage. At previous Paralympic Games, it was not uncommon to have a handful of British press in attendance. In London, more than 400 British journalists and photographers are accredited.

BaronessTanni-Grey Thompson, who through her 11 gold medals and ease with the media has done more than any other athlete to change perception, understanding and awareness of elite disability sport in this country, believes that ticketing policy has been key.

“They got it right with the pricing,” she says. “A lot are well priced, and affordable.”

There are 20 sports at the Paralympic Games and Lady Grey-Thompson believes all will be good. She knows some people may have applied because they missed out on the Olympics but it doesn’t matter as long as they are inspired by what they see. “I want the public to see it as sport and nothing else,” she said.

It is all a very long way from Rome in 1960, where 70 British athletes waited patiently in a coach on the tarmac at London Airport, now Heathrow. One by one they would be carried from their seats to a catering truck that lifted them to the door of the plane. They were then picked up again and carried inside the aircraft. It took hours.

Margaret Maughan, an archer, remembers the original Paralympics well. Born in June 1928 and brought up in Preston, all Margaret wanted to do was travel the world. After a spell in Jamaica teaching home economics she was offered a job in Malawi.

By day she was captivated by the lilting sound of African children singing songs of welcome. By night, there were chances to share experiences with fellow expats.

So when someone she didn’t know offered to drive her to a party she agreed.

Only the friend drove too fast along narrow, dusty village roads, lost control and crashed, landing the car upside down in a remote field. Margaret, trapped the wrong way up and in unbearable pain, lay for hours before help finally arrived, her spinal cord severed.

When she was well enough to be repatriated, Margaret ended up at a hospital she had never heard of — Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire — under the direction of a German émigré called Ludwig Guttmann.

Much has been written of Guttmann, the neurosurgeon who had a passion for paraplegia and a desire to see paralysed patients treated and viewed differently. He did so against a backdrop of prejudice: from a public who believed those with spinal cord injuries should be patronised and pitied as they could never be reintegrated into society; and a medical profession that viewed working with paraplegics as a futile cause.

Guttmann thought differently and set in place a regime where medical care changed and physical activity was compulsory. At Stoke Mandeville, Margaret was encouraged to concentrate on what she could do, not what she couldn’t. “You were encouraged not to feel sorry for yourself,” she says.

It all started with an archery competition between Stoke Mandeville and The Royal Star and Garter Home in Richmond, which the latter won. From that came the annual Stoke Mandeville Games, and then the International ones.

In 1960, these Games were taken overseas for the first time, to Rome, one week after the Olympic Games ended.

By all accounts those first 400 athletes had a joyous time. Their daily packed lunches included a bottle of wine. Whether this helped, or hindered, Margaret Maughan’s aim isn’t clear but either way she won archery gold.

“To my total amazement I had won,” she says. “I had got the gold medal — it was the first for Great Britain at that event, and I was the first-ever gold medal winner in any event for Britain”.

At the end of the week, the Pope addressed the athletes, expressing his admiration.

Britain has never won the right to host the Paralympics until now. Just as in the Olympics, the sport is likely to be exceptional, whether it is Oscar Pistorius eating up the track in the 400m or Jonnie Peacock in one of the most exciting events of the Games, the 100m. In cycling and rowing there will be a reminders of the part military conflict is playing in the Games including Jon-Allan Butterworth, who lost an arm in Iraq, and Nick Beighton, who lost both legs when he stepped on an IED.

My favourite story, though, comes from Sue Campbell, chairman of UK Sport, at Athens 2004, the first Games I covered.

Now Baroness Campbell, she recalls watching the most severely disabled swimmers parade along the side of the pool before getting ready to swim their event. One competitor removed both arms then legs, before getting into the water, using her trunk to propel her to the other end.

As tears streamed down Campbell’s face, a colleague asked her why she was crying. “I am going to go away and be a better person,” she said, before explaining the impact that night had on her. “You don’t feel that when you are watching the Olympics — you are enthralled by Paralympic sport. It’s magnificent in a different way.”

It is, and will be, and for the Tom Aggars of today — and tomorrow — it is time to recognise and celebrate that.

* Cathy Wood is the author of 'Paralympic Heroes’ (Carlton; £18.99)