Add Category
Almost two weeks after the Paris Olympics came to an end, the spotlight is now on the Paralympic Games.
British athletes Helene Raynsford and Gregor Ewan lit the Paralympic Flame in Stoke Mandeville, a village north-west of London widely considered the birthplace of the Games.
The Paralympic Flame will travel to France under the English Channel for a four-day relay.
Its journey will end in Paris on Thursday morning, Australian time, during the Paralympics opening ceremony.
The lighting ceremony of the Paralympic Heritage Flame was held in Buckinghamshire, where the Stoke Mandeville Games were first held in 1948.
The competition was staged for a small group of wheelchair athletes who had sustained spinal injuries during World War II.
The person behind the idea was Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurosurgeon who fled Germany and worked at a 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 a way to keep them motivated.
Andrew Parsons (left) and Tony Estanguet during the Paralympic Flame lighting ceremony. (AP: Thomas Krych)
"I can feel his [Guttmann] presence here today, no doubt about it," said International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons during the lighting ceremony.
Paris 2024 organising committee president Tony Estanguet said the French capital was "proud and excited" to host the 17th edition of the Paralympics.
"We are ready to make it unique and memorable for France and the whole world," Estanguet said.
The Stoke Mandeville Games 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 cross the sea via the Channel Tunnel to mark the start of the Paralympic relay.
A group of 24 British athletes will embark on the underwater journey through the tunnel.
Midway through, they will hand over the flame to 24 French athletes who will bring it ashore in Calais.
It will be used to light 12 torches, symbolising 11 days of competition and the opening ceremony.
AP