History
The Paralympic Torch: A Flame of Its Own
Why the Paralympic flame starts on a hospital lawn in England instead of at a Greek temple
March 1, 2026Updated September 29, 20264 min read
Follow Along
Relay news and campaign updates by email.
The Paralympic flame is not lit at Olympia. There is no priestess and no parabolic mirror. It starts on the grounds of a hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, and I think that may be the better origin.
Sixteen Archers on a Hospital Lawn
In the 1940s, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurosurgeon who had fled Nazi Germany, ran the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. Medicine at the time treated paralysis as the end of a useful life. Guttmann disagreed. He put his patients, most of them injured servicemen and women, into competition, because sport rebuilt the strength and discipline that months on a ward took away.
On July 29, 1948, the same day the London Olympics opened, Guttmann staged an archery competition for 16 wheelchair athletes on the hospital grounds. The Stoke Mandeville Games became an annual event, then an international one, and by Rome in 1960 they had grown into what we now count as the first Paralympic Games.
The movement began with a doctor, a lawn and sixteen people most of the world had written off.
Seoul 1988: A Relay of Its Own
The Paralympics ran for decades without a torch relay. The first came at Seoul 1988: a flame kindled on Mani Mountain on Kangwha Island, then carried about 105 kilometers by 282 torchbearers, 111 of them people with disabilities.
Next to Olympic relays that circle the globe, it was tiny. It still established that the movement had its own fire, carried by its own people.
Finding Its Olympia
For years afterward, each host invented its own lighting tradition. For London 2012, teams climbed the highest peaks of the United Kingdom's four nations, and the flames were brought together at Stoke Mandeville. Ahead of Sochi 2014, the first Heritage Flame was kindled at Stoke Mandeville Stadium, the first time a Paralympic relay had an international leg.
That settled it. The Paralympic flame now originates at Stoke Mandeville, the way the Olympic flame originates at Olympia. The movement's sacred site is a hospital.
Under the Channel, Split in Twelve
For Paris 2024, the flame was created at Stoke Mandeville on August 24, 2024, lit by the British Paralympians Helene Raynsford and Gregor Ewan. Twenty-four British torchbearers carried it into the Channel Tunnel, and midway beneath the sea they handed it to twenty-four French counterparts.
At Calais the flame was divided into twelve, one for each day of the Games, and roughly 1,000 torchbearers ran twelve simultaneous relays that converged on Paris. Guttmann, who liked results more than sentiment, would have approved of the logistics.
Los Angeles in 2028
Los Angeles has hosted the Olympics twice but has never hosted a Paralympic Games. In 1984, while the Olympics filled the Coliseum, the Paralympics were split between New York and Stoke Mandeville. The Paralympic Games come to LA in August 2028, right after the Olympics, and with them a Paralympic flame in our streets for the first time.
LA28 has confirmed the outline: the Paralympic flame will originate at Stoke Mandeville and its relay will follow the close of the Olympic Games in August 2028, with the US starting point still to come. (What LA28 announced.) Paris set a high bar with a flame that crossed under the sea and split into twelve.
Two flames will come to this city. One descends from a Greek temple and the other from a hospital lawn, and the second asks what you do with the hand you are dealt. Torchbearers are chosen because their answer is worth seeing at street level.
I am campaigning to carry the flame through Santa Monica in 2028, and the Paralympic torch is a big part of why. The Olympic flame will cross all 50 states on its way here. If someone in your life lives the way Guttmann's patients did, nominate them.