The Kladruby Games, the Paralympics, and the pre-history of disability sport

The place of Dr Ludwig Guttmann in the founding history of the Paralympic Games is universally acknowledged. Briefly stated, Guttmann is credited with the aspiration to improve the dismal prospects of postwar spinal injury patients, and the inspiration of using sports as rehabilitative practices. Given his initiation of the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948 with a small-scale archery contest between two local teams, he was able to draw a ready parallel between his beginnings and the model of the London Olympic Games, and in a few short years the multi-disability Paralympic Games had been established. However, there was both an historical context and a co-history to these brief details – there are lessons from both time and place. We must not forget (or fail to acknowledge) some of the pre-history and parallel histories, which we should attempt to recover. This article presents an account of the development of the Kladruby Games in Czechoslovakia from 1948, which in 2017 celebrate their 100th edition, in order to bring to light some of the hidden history of disability sport. We might be led to speculate on how the Kladruby Games might have developed from these very promising beginnings, had Srdečný received earlier support from the authorities, and the impetus to consider Olympic connections. Such speculations we consider to be fruitless, given the very different conceptions of disability sport at work here. Srdečný’s continuing commitment was to seeing the Kladruby Games as an impetus to the rehabilitative and recreational benefits of sport, rather than the contradictions experienced by the Paralympics in balancing elite performance values with its other aims.