Margaret Maughan

Margaret Maughan

Medal record
Paralympic Games
Competitor for  United Kingdom
Archery (B1)
	1960 Rome	Columbia Round open
Swimming (class 5)
	1960 Rome	50 m Backstroke complete
Dartchery
	1972 Heidelberg	Pairs open
	1976 Toronto	Pairs open
Lawn bowls (wh / 2-5)
	1976 Toronto	Pairs
	1980 Arnheim	Pairs

Margaret Maughan (born ca. 1928)^[1] is a British former competitive archer. She holds the distinction of being Britain's first ever gold medallist at the Paralympic Games.^[1] She lit the cauldron at the Olympic Stadium (London) at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Paralympics.^[2]

Sporting career

Maughan was left paralysed from the waist down and unable to walk by a road accident in Malawi in 1959.^[3] She returned to Britain and was treated at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where spinal injury unit founder Dr. Ludwig Guttmann pioneered the use of sport in therapy.^[2] There, she took up archery and joined an archery club. The hospital had been the site of the Stoke Mandeville Games, a sports competition for wheelchair athletes which subsequently developed into the Paralympic Games.^[1]

1960 Summer Paralympics

Maughan was selected as part of Britain's delegation to the Ninth Stoke Mandeville Games, later known as the First Summer Paralympic Games, held in Rome in 1960.^[1]

Maughan competed in only one archery event, the Women's Columbia round open. Scoring 484 points, she won Britain's first ever Paralympic gold medal. Because of disorganization in tracking the scores, she had to be taken from the coach heading back to the Olympic village to be presented with her prize.^[3]

She also took part in swimming, in the Women's 50 metre backstroke complete class 5. As she was the only competitor in the race, she won by completing the full 50 metres, with a time of 1:49.2.^[1][4]

Wheelchair accessibility in transport and housing was not a major consideration at the time, and Maughan would later relate how she and her British teammates were moved onto the plane to Rome with forklift trucks. Once at the Games, Italian army soldiers had to be called in to carry them up and down the stairs to the athletes' residences.^[2] Returning home, she and her wheelchair had to travel in the guard's van on the train back to Preston. Finding employment was difficult; although she was a qualified teacher it was assumed a woman in a wheelchair could not control a class of students.^[3]

1968 Summer Paralympics

Maughan did not take part in the 1964 Games, but returned for the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv. She entered two events in archery - the Women's albion round open and the Women's FITA round open. With scores of 571 and 1534, she finished fourth and fifth, respectively.^[4]

1972 Summer Paralympics

At the 1972 Games in Heidelberg, Maughan again competed in the Women's FITA round open, finishing sixth with a score of 1699.

She also entered dartchery, with a teammate whose name is recorded as M. Cooper, in the Women's pairs open. They took the gold medal, ahead of France and Norway.^[4]

1976 Summer Paralympics

At the 1976 Summer Paralympics in Toronto, Maughan diversified further. She and teammate M. Cooper obtained the silver medal in the Women's pairs open in dartchery, behind the United States and ahead of South Africa. In archery, in the Women's advanced metric round open, she finished fifth with a score of 568.

Entering two events in lawn bowls, she obtained two victories to finish fourth in the Women's singles wh – the gold going to South Africa's Margaret Harriman – while British competitors took silver and bronze. In the Women's pairs wh, she and teammate F. Nowak took the silver medal (behind South Africa and ahead of another British pair), with three victories.^[4]

1980 Summer Paralympics

At the 1980 Summer Paralympics, for her fifth and final appearance at the Paralympic Games, Maughan competed only in lawn bowls. In the Women's singles 2-5, she was beaten 4:21 by Germany's Swanepoel, and 12:21 by fellow British competitor R. Thompson, finishing fourth and last. But in the Women's pairs 2-5, she teamed up with R. Thompson to win her final gold medal, beating a Maltese pair 13:9 then a British pair by an unrecorded score.^[4]

2012 Summer Paralympics

She was the final torch bearer, who lit the Paralympic Flame, opening the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.^[5]

References