Philip Craven

On 7 August 2016, Craven announced that the International Paralympic Committee would ban Russia from participating in the 2016 Paralympic Games for allegedly violating international doping rules. This followed WADA's June 2016 report with accusations of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

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. Craven became the first president to have the Paralympics games to be hosted in his home country in the UK in 2012.

In 1991 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to wheelchair basketball. And then in June 2005 Craven was Knighted by the Queen this time for services to Paralympic Sport .

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 legitimise wheelchair basketball itself.

Craven served as Company Secretary at the British Coal Corporation from 1986 up to 1991.

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 led 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.

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.

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.

Sir Philip Craven MBE (born 4 July 1951) is an English sports administrator and former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player. Between 2001 and 2017 he was the second president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

Craven was born on 4 July 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 (BA) degree in 1972.