Disability sport is going back to its roots: rehabilitation of military personnel receiving sudden traumatic disabilities in the twenty-first century

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the recently forged links between the military and the National Paralympic Committees in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the USA. To date there has been no published academic material on the explicit link between the Paralympic Games/disability sport and conflict situations. This is despite the fact that the Paralympic Games and their forebears the Stoke Mandeville Games grew out of the rehabilitation of spinally injured military personnel at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, UK. Therefore, using a life course analysis approach, this paper will investigate this link using secondary data sources and quotations from military personnel from the four countries mentioned above. This paper aims to serve three key purposes: (i) to provide the context for the evolution (and re-emergence) of these military-paralympic links; (ii) to provide a critical review of the historical link between the military and the Paralympic Games/disability sport that includes references to secondary qualitative and quantitative data and (iii) to provide an over-arching narrative of the importance of sport for injured military personnel who are attempting to re-build their lives. In doing so, this paper will highlight the role of sport as a vehicle for military personnel who have endured life-changing trauma and are negotiating their transition within society.

Keywords:

• military
• sport
• Paralympic
• life course
• identity
• rehabilitation

Notes

1. Jeremy Kyle is an English radio and television presenter, best known for his British daytime television chat show that involves family feuds, DNA testing and lie detectors!

2. To ‘doss’ means to sleep or lie down in any convenient place.

3. Under the social model, disability is caused by the society in which we live and is not the ‘fault’ of an individual disabled person, or an inevitable consequence of their limitations. Disability is the product of the physical, organisational and attitudinal barriers present within society, which lead to discrimination. The removal of discrimination requires a change of approach and thinking in the way in which society is organised (Open University 2011).