An Australian at the 1951 Stoke Mandeville Games

The 4th Stoke Mandeville Games were held on 28 July 1951, with double the number of athletes from 1950 – 121 in total from 11 teams. Snooker was added to the athletic program, bringing the total number of official sports to four, and Club Swinging and Table Tennis were added as demonstration sports. In line with Ludwig Guttmann’s vision to internationalise the games, four individual international athletes competed from the participating institutions. These included Australia’s first participant in the Games, Charlene Todman. A patient at Stoke Mandeville, Todman competed as a member of the Stoke Mandeville team. She finished second in the women’s Archery event.

The 1951 Stoke Mandeville Games was the first Games to include international athletes. One of them was Australian Charlene Todman.