On your marks,

marks, the ethos of the Paralympic movement is fair and equal competition.

Welcome to assignment here on the BBC World Service.

I'm Jane Deeth and I've come to the place where it all began.

An athletics track next to the Spinal Injury Center at Stote Mandeville Hospital in England.

The drama you can hear is the last competition in the season for British wheelchair racing

and athletics. The first patients to come here were injured

in the Second World War. They were put under the care of neurologist Dr Ludwig Gutman.

In 1948, on the opening day of the London Olympics,

he launched the annual Stoke Mandeville Games.

There's a big sporting occasion, and at Stoke Mandeville Games. There's a big sporting occasion.

And at Stoke Mandeville, we're shown once again that even a spinal injury needn't stop you from joining in.

It started with mostly field events.

Some of these lads like this javelin thrower

look tougher in their wheelchairs than most of us do out of them.

The games sowed the seed for the Paralympics,

first held in Rome in 1960 and now the third

largest sporting event in the world. At London 2012, the Paralympians got equal billing. We watched more than 4,000 athletes from

164 countries and for the first time really, global stars were born,

on the track and the field and in the pool.

It was the most incredible race of my entire life to know those athletes around me were the same

athletes as me.

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