| Philip Craven | |
|---|---|
| Craven at the 2008 Summer Paralympics | |
| 2nd President of the International Paralympic Committee | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 8 December 2001[1] |
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| Preceded by | Robert Steadward |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 4 July 1950 Bolton England |
| Nationality | British |
| Residence | United Kingdom |
Sir Philip Craven MBE (born 4 July 1950 in Bolton, England) is a British sports official and former athlete. He is the second and current President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
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Craven obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography at University of Manchester in 1972. Prior to that he was at Bolton School Boys' Division. He speaks fluent English and French, as well as basic German.
Craven represented Great Britain in wheelchair basketball at five editions of the Paralympic Games, from 1972 to 1988. He also competed in track and field athletics and swimming at the 1972 Games.
He won gold at the wheelchair basketball World Championships in 1973, and bronze in 1975, as well two gold medals (1971, 1974) and a silver (1993) at the European Championships. He also won gold at the European Champions Cup in 1994, and gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1970.
In 1980, alongside Horst Strohkendl and Stan Labanowich, Craven played a vital role in the development of a new classification system for wheelchair basketball athletes. Wheelchair basketball rejected its medically-based classification system consisting of 3 classes, a system that was founded upon principles that forced athletes to depend on medical examinations. This progress lead to a new 4-class functional system, which was democratically voted in 1982. Due to this, wheelchair basketball was increasingly associated with sport as opposed to medicine and rehabilitation, although both still play an important secondary role.
In 1988, Craven was elected Chairperson of the Wheelchair Basketball Section of the International Stoke Mandeville Games Federation (ISMGF), the first athlete to lead the sport worldwide. Craven's striving for self-determination and self-government pave the way for the establishment of wheelchair basketball as an independent federation, when it gave up its previous identification as a basketball section of the ISMGF to become the independent, self-governing International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF) in 1993. At the First IWBF Official World Congress 1994 in Edmonton, Alberta, Philip Craven was elected the first President of IWBF, holding the office until 1998. A productive and more formalized working relationship with FIBA, the worldwide governing body for the sport of basketball, was arranged under Craven's administration, to further legitimize wheelchair basketball itself.
Craven was elected as the second President of the International Paralympic Committee in 2001, a position he continues to hold today.
Sir Philip Craven is today an Ambassador for Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organization,[2] committed to serving peace in the world through sport.
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