Craven, Sir Philip Lee

• Craven, Philip

Sir Philip Lee Craven is an English sports administrator and a former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player, swimmer, and track and field athlete. Between 2001 and 2017 he was the second president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). Craven was born on July 4, 1951 in Bolton, England. He was educated at Bolton School Boys' Division, where he was a keen swimmer, cricketer, and tennis player. In 1966, at the age of 16, he fell during a rock-climbing expedition at Wilton Quarries, Bolton. The accident left him without the use of his legs. He studied geography at the University of Manchester, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972. 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 as 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 1970 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games. 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. In 1988, Craven was elected Chairman 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 formalised 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. He oversaw 8 Paralympic games with his first being Salt Lake City in 2002 and his last being in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Sir Philip became the first President to have the Paralympics games hosted in his home country, with the UK in 2012. Craven served as Company Secretary at the British Coal Corporation from 1986 up to 1991. He is an Ambassador for Peace and Sport. In the 1991 New Years Honours List he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to wheelchair basketball, and in the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Craven was knighted by the Queen for services to Paralympic Sport. In 2017, Sir Philip was awarded the Paralympic Order. In 2018, Sir Philip was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Toyota Motor Corporation.

Bolton, England

Paralympic wheelchair basketball player
Paralympic track and field athlete
Paralympic swimmer
Paralympics President

RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.

Catalogued December 2021.

1) Archival material
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Craven
3) https://www.paralympic.org/news/sir-philip-craven-honoured