Michael Shelton is a British sportsman who competed at the

Summer Paralympic Games The Summer Paralympics also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, are an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete. This includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebral ...

five times between 1960 and 1976 in

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sports, cue sport played on a Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, rectangular table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets, one at each corner and o ...

and other sports. He won six Paralympic medals, four gold, a silver and a bronze. He also won gold at the 1974 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games. Shelton was from

Newstead, Nottinghamshire Newstead is a village and civil parish in Nottinghamshire, England in the borough of Gedling.OS Explorer Map 270: Sherwood Forest: (1:25 000): It is situated between the city of Nottingham and the towns of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Sutton-in-Ashfield ...

and had been a miner at Newstead Colliery. His back was injured in 1958 by a roof fall, and he was paralysed from the waist down. In 1969 he married Iris Turner, who had been a

nursing sister Nursing management consists of the performance of the leadership functions of governance and decision-making within organizations employing nurses. It includes processes common to all management like planning, organizing, staffing, directing and ...

on his ward when he was in hospital. He played for the

Lodge Moor Hospital Lodge Moor Hospital is a former isolation hospital on Redmires Road in the Lodge Moor area of the City of Sheffield, England. The hospital which opened in 1888 and closed in 1994 initially treated Smallpox but soon broadened its treatment to oth ...

paraplegic snooker team, which in 1974 was refused entry to the Sheffield and District Works Sports Association league, on the basis that they would gain unfair advantage from playing all of their fixtures at their home venue, apparently failing to acknowledge that the team would be unable to play at other venues with stairs or limited space around the

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. The team was subsequently given the chance to participate in the Sheffield Social Snooker League and play all their games at their own home base.

Paralympic career

In 1960, at the inaugural Paralympic Games in Rome, Shelton won a silver medal in the

, he had also competed in the precision javelin throw and shot put C where he finished 41st and 24th respectively in the events. He followed this up with three consecutive gold medals, at the

1964 Tokyo Paralympics The , originally known as the 13th International Stoke Mandeville Games and also known as Paralympic Tokyo 1964,

, 1968 Tel Aviv Paralympics, and 1972 Heidelberg Paralympics. At the 1976 Toronto Paralympics, Shelton won bronze in the Men's 2-5 Snooker, but took the gold medal in the lawn bowls, men's singles wh.

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