Paul Hudson, the Briton who leads the French drug firm Sanofi, is “immensely” proud to have carried the torch at the recent Paralympics opening ceremony along with fellow employees, as the firm was one of the sponsors of both sets of Paris games.
“It was more emotional for people carrying the torch than they realised, perhaps even than I realised,” Hudson says, recalling how the Paralympics grew out of the Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, a spinal injuries centre where German-born neurologist Prof Sir Ludwig Guttmann organised the first competition for wheelchair athletes in 1948.
