On July 29, 1948, the day of the Opening Ceremony of the London 1948 Olympic Games, Guttmann organised the first competition for wheelchair athletes, which he named the Stoke Mandeville Games. In 1944, at the request of the British Government, Guttmann opened a spinal injuries centre at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, and in time, rehabilitation sport practised there evolved to recreational sport and then to competitive sport. Guttmann - born in Tost, Germany on this day (June 3) in 1899 – was a Jewish doctor who became one of the country’s top specialist surgeons for spinal cord injuries before fleeing to Britain in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution. The doodle, illustrated by Baltimore-based guest artist Ashanti Fortson, shows the elderly moustachioed figure against a background of wheelchair athletes competing in a range of sports. The founder of the Paralympic Movement, Professor Sir Ludwig Guttmann, has been honoured on what would have been his 122nd birthday by a Google doodle.
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