Paris Paralympics flame begins its journey from Stoke Mandeville

(24 Aug 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY: Digital Restrictions – Duration limited to 1’30” per video/No posts for commercial purposes

ASSOCIATED PRESS - Digital Restrictions: Duration limited to 1’30” per video/No posts for commercial purposes
Stoke Mandeville, UK - 24 August 2024
1. Wide of British Paralympians, Helene Raynsford (left) and Gregor Ewan (right), lighting torches on stage
2. Mid of Raynsford holding torch
3. Mid of Ewan holding torch
4. President of the International Paralympic Committee Andrew Parsons lighting torch
5. Various of the Paralympic Flame being moved into lantern to carry to Paris
6. Wide of ceremony
7. Close of screen reading (English) "See you at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games"
STORYLINE:
The Paralympic flame was lit on Saturday in Stoke Mandeville, a village northwest of London, widely considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.

Two weeks after French star swimmer Léon Marchand extinguished the Olympic flame to close the Paris Olympics, the spotlight is now on its Paralympic counterpart.

The lighting ceremony took place in Buckinghamshire, where the Stoke Mandeville Games were first held in 1948 for a small group of wheelchair athletes who had sustained spinal injuries during World War II.

The man behind the idea was Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurosurgeon who fled Nazi Germany and worked at Britain’s Stoke Mandeville hospital.

At the time, suffering a spinal injury was considered a death sentence, and patients were discouraged from moving.

Guttmann made the patients sit up and work muscles, and hit upon competition as way to keep them motivated.

Those later grew into the first Paralympic Games, which took place in Rome in 1960.

The Heritage Flame ceremony in Stoke Mandeville was first held ahead of the London Paralympics in 2012.

The flame will travel to France under the English Channel for a four-day relay from Atlantic Ocean shores to Mediterranean beaches, from mountains in the Pyrenees to the Alps.

Its journey will end in Paris on Wednesday during the Paralympics opening ceremony — with the lighting of a unique Olympic cauldron attached to a hot-air balloon that will fly over the French capital every evening during 11 days of competition.

AP video shot by Kwiyeon Ha

===========================================================

Clients are reminded to adhere to all listed restrictions and to check the terms of their licence agreements. For further assistance, please contact the AP Archive on: Tel +44(0)2074827482 Email: [email protected].

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...