Margaret Maughan
Disabled athlete who won Britain’s first Paralympics gold
MARGARET MAUGHAN, who has died aged 91, won Britain’s first ever Paralympics gold medal at Rome in 1960; 52 years later she lit the last petal on Thomas Heatherwick’s cauldron, officially opening the 2012 London Paralympic Games.
Margaret Maughan was paralysed from the waist down in 1959 in a car accident in Malawi, where she had been working as a teacher. Sent to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, she came under the care of the pioneering Dr Ludwig Guttmann, who had organised the first “Stoke Mandeville Games” for disabled war veterans in 1948.
One day, finding her lying on her bed and crying from pain, he told her: “You’ve got to look forward. You’ve got to put up with it. Be brave.” Before long she was playing table tennis, taking swimming lessons and trying out archery. Though she had never been much good at games, she found she was “quite good” at archery.
The ninth Stoke Mandeville Games, later recognised as the first Summer Paralympic Games, were held in Rome in 1960, and Margaret Maughan joined 69 other wheelchairbound British athletes who flew to Italy to compete.
Facilities for disabled people at that time were rudimentary in the extreme. At London Airport the athletes all had to be lifted from the runway to the plane by forklift truck. It took hours.
Once in Rome, they discovered that their accommodation in the Olympic Village had been built on stilts. As they had to be carried up two flights of stairs to get to and from the competition venues, the Italian army was drafted in to help.
Despite such indignities, Margaret Maughan thoroughly enjoyed herself: “The atmosphere was marvellous, meeting people from all over the world.”
In a BBC interview in 2012, she recalled that the organisation of the Games was so casual that she did not discover that she had won the archery event until she and her fellow competitors were on the coaches back to the Village.
“Somebody said: ‘Where’s Margaret Maughan? She’s needed for a medal ceremony.’
“So they had to find my wheelchair amongst all the others, lift me out, and off we went to a very nice little podium with ramps to get up to the first, second and third places, and to my amazement I was in the gold medal position.”
Later, she notched up a second gold – in swimming, as the only competitor in the 50 metres backstroke race.
“It was quite exciting but … there wasn’t much press about it,” she recalled. “I had my picture in the Lancashire Evening Post and that was about it. When I came home I had to sit in the guard’s van on the train because there wasn’t enough room in the carriage.”
She went on to compete in the 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 Paralympic Games, winning another two gold and two silver medals – in paired dartchery (a cross between archery and darts) and lawn bowls.
Margaret Maughan was born in June 19 1928 and became a domestic science teacher. After her accident and return to Britain, she found it hard to get teaching jobs: “Back then, disabled people were written off.”
She wrote some 300 letters before she was offered a job at Leggatts Way Girls’ School, Watford. She worked there, and at Bushey Meads School, before retirement.
She was delighted when Lord (Sebastian) Coe, chairman of the London 2012 organising committee, rang to invite her to take part in the opening ceremony for the Paralympics.
“I did a rehearsal the day before,” she recalled, “and then I was in the show, with two lovely chaps, one who was injured in Afghanistan, and the other was David Clarke, captain of the football team … It was just a sea of people all around, it was very emotional and impressive.”
Margaret Maughan, born June 19 1928, death announced May 20 2020