First Para-Athletes Blazed Trails

The First Para-Athletes defied all odds long before Paralympics became an official event. Overcoming physical and social challenges, they showed the world they could not only compete, but they could excel and thrill audiences while doing it.

Dr. Ludwig Guttmann opened a spinal injuries centre at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Great Britain, and in time, rehabilitation sport evolved to recreational sport and then to competitive sport.

On July 29, 1948, the opening day of the Olympic Games, Dr. Guttmann organized the first competition for wheelchair athletes. Named the Stoke Mandeville Games, it was a milestone in Paralympic history.

In Rome, Italy 1960, the competition became known as the Paralympic Games. It featured 400 athletes from 23 countries.

History is filled with people who thrived in spite of or because of a disability. Some competed in small local events while others tested their skills on a global stage. Following are just a few of the First Para-athletes who blazed the way for today’s Paralympics.

First Para-athletes: Summer Olympics Poster, 1904, St. Louis. Image: Wikipedia.

First Para-athletes: George Eyser on Horizontal Bar. Image: Western Athletics, July, 1895.

#1-George Eyser Redefined Gymnastics With A Wooden Leg

George Eyser (1870-1919) was one of the First Para-Athletes to excel in prestigious sports competitions.

At the age of 14, he and his family emigrated from Germany to Denver, Colorado. Around 1902, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he worked as a bookkeeper for a construction company.

Most people believe Eyser lost his leg in a childhood accident involving a train. But Joshua Prager in American Scholar writes that Eyser was confined to a sick room for many months from 1891-1893 at which time he was walking on crutches. Eventually his left foot was amputated above the ankle and below the knee in a second surgery.

Advances in prosthetic design occurred after the American Civil War that left some 60,000 young men without limbs. The new models “jointed wood with rubber hands and feet— approximated the shape and feel of natural limbs as never before. e legs were known as “cork legs.” Eyser got one. “ (Joshua Prager)

Eyser often worked out in the gym without his prosthetic. He was an avid athlete and member of the renowned athletic team Concordia Turnverein. With his club, he competed against athletes without disabilities in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.

According to Sports Reference the competitions took place over several months. He did badly in the first round, placing 71^st individually but 10^th in the nine-event all-around.

“He finished last in the other three events of the triathlon – 100 yard dash, long jump and shot put, pulled down mostly by his 13-foot long jump and 15.4 time for the dash.” (Sports Reference)

Despite that, on October 29, 1904 he was awarded six medals. Among them were three gold in the 25-foot rope climbing, parallel bars and the long horse vault. He won two silver medals in the 4-event all-around and the pommel horse. And he won a bronze in horizontal bar.

One of the first Para-athletes, Eyser was the only person with an artificial leg to compete in regular Olympics until 2008. He blazed a trail for South African swimmer, Natalie du Tois who lost her leg to a traffic accident. She placed 16^th in the 10 km swimming marathon at the 2009 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, double amputee Oscar Pistorius competed in several running events.

Eyser died by suicide on March 5, 1919. (Joshua Prager)

First Para-athletes: George Eyser. Image: Wikipedia.

First Para-athletes: George Eyser, in center with Concordia team, c. 1908. Image: Wikipedia.

First Para-athletes: George Eyser, (third row, second from left with mustache) with East Denver Turner Team, c. 1900. Image: Denver Turnverein.

First Para-athletes: George Eyser, in center with Concordia team, 1908. Image: Wikipedia.

#2-Oliver Halassy Was A Powerhouse In Hungary’s Water Polo Team

At age 11, Oliver Halassy (1909-1946) lost his leg below the knee in a train or streetcar accident. Despite his challenges on land, he was one of the First Para-athletes who thrived in a pool despite his amputation. Both a champion freestyle swimmer and water polo player, he was inducted in the Swimming Hall of Fame after his death.

With the Hungarian Water Polo Team, he won a silver medal the Olympics of 1928 and gold medals in1932 and 1936. He also became European champion in 1500 meter freestyle swimming in 1931. Among his many awards, he won 25 national swimming titles, and set 12 records. (Sports Reference)

Halassy worked as an auditor at City Hall in Budapest. He was killed in what appeared to be a mugging near his home.

First Para-athletes: Oliver Helassay, c. 1931. Image: Wikipedia.

#3-Carlo Orlandi Won Olympic Boxing Gold

Deaf-mute from birth, Italian boxer Carlo Orlandi (1910-1983) set records as one of the First Para-athletes. In the 1928 Olympic games in Amsterdam, he won four straight fights to take home gold in the lightweight division.

The next year Orlandi went professional. Boxing professionally throughout the 1930s, he held Italian and European lightweight titles. In 1941 he won the Italian welterweight title.

According to DeafLympics, the first sport clubs for the deaf began in 1888 in Berlin. But the organized International Silent Games were held in 1924 in Paris. The first para-athletes who were non-hearing came from nine European nations. Eugène Rubens-Alcais, organized the games and served as President of the French Deaf Sports Federation.

“At a time when societies everywhere viewed deaf people as intellectually inferior, linguistically impoverished and often treated as outcasts, Monsieur Rubens-Alcais envisioned the international sports event as the best answer to prove that the deaf were more than what they were viewed. Antoine Dresse, a young deaf Belgian, was instrumental in helping him accomplish his dream.” (DeafLympics)

First Para-athletes: Carlo Orlandi, c. 1928. Image: Wikipedia.

#4-Some Thought That Being Female Was As An Athletic Disability

For context, during much of the 1800s and early 1900s, some believed that mountain climbing and bicycling were too strenuous for females who ran the risk of injuries including the dreaded bicycle face. And merely traveling solo was considered much too dangerous for the fair sex.

By the time Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland started their race around the globe in 1889, and Annie Londonderry biked around the world in 1895, perceptions were changing.

Still, women were not allowed to compete in the first modern International Olympics held in Athens, Greece in 1896. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee said that female athletes would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect.”

But in 1900, a few early female Olympians got through the door to compete in five sports in which their legs could be “aesthetically” covered by long skirts.

Female swimmers were not allowed to compete in the Olympics until 1912.