In 1948, Dr. Ludwig Guttmann of Stoke Mandeville Hospital was the first to organize an Olympic competition of disabled athletes. The games took place in Londonall of the competitors were British World War II veterans who had suffered damage to their spines. Upon seeing the success of this competition, the “Stoke Mandeville Games” returned four years later, with Dutch veterans participating as well. The first games to go by the title “Paralympics” took place in Rome in 1960, but there was no single unifying committee to organize them.A committee was formed in 1964 called the International Sports Organization for the Disabled (ISOD). In 1982, this committee established the International Coordinating Committee of World Sports Organizations for the Disabled (ICC). When the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) was founded in 1989, it represented a newfound need to include both representatives from all participating nations, and athletes themselves.Robert Steadward served as the founding president of the committee from 1989 to 2001. Steadward and his colleagues envisioned a committee that brought together athletes regardless of their particular disability, differing from the specific organizations that had come before. In 2001, Sir Philip Craven, who participated in wheelchair basketball at five Paralympics games (and track and field and swimming at the 1972 Games) took over as President of the IPC. Craven had already played a large role in wheelchair basketball administration, helping to establish a new classification system in 1980 that removed forced medical examinations and emphasized the sporting aspect of the game.