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| Sailing Paralympic athletes Brazil's Bruno Landgraf, right, and Elaine Cunha train in Guarapiranga lake in Sao Paulo on Aug. 10. Landgraf and Cunha will compete in the Skud 18 sailing class in the 2012 London Paralympic Games which will take place from Aug. 29 to Sept. 9. (Reuters Photo/Paulo Whitaker) |
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The world’s
top athletes with a disability, including “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius,
converge on London next week for what organizers say will be the biggest and
most high-profile Paralympics in the Games’ 52-year history.
A record
4,200 athletes from 166 countries will be in the British capital, with the
11-day Games a near sell-out and expected to be watched by an estimated global
television audience of four billion people.
Britain is
considered the birthplace of the Paralympic movement, after World War II
veterans with spinal injuries competed in archery events at Stoke Mandeville in
southern England in 1948, 12 years before the first official Games in Rome.
The
International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said that history, a desire to see
more elite sport after a successful Olympics, increased media coverage and
sponsorship have combined to drive up interest and awareness.
“There’s a
fantastic buzz in the air, waiting for it to kick off and people talking about
it,” IPC president Philip Craven told Agence France-Presse before next
Wednesday’s opening ceremony.
China held
the last Paralympics in Beijing in 2008 and did much to raise the Games’
profile.
The
previous hosts won 211 medals, including 89 gold, and will be looking to
replicate that success this time round.
But
challenging them will be the current hosts, who came third in the Olympics
medal table, galvanizing wide support for the Games across the country and
lifting a national mood hit by lingering economic woes.
ParalympicsGB
have been set a minimum target of 103 medals from at least 12 different sports
— one better than in Beijing — and to match their second-place finish four
years ago.
For the
home team, hopes are highest for athletes like Jonnie Peacock, who in June set
a new T44 100m record of 10.85secs and is expected to challenge South Africa’s
Pistorius for gold in the showpiece track event.
With
Pistorius’ long-standing rival Jerome Singleton, of the United States, and a
host of other lightning-fast sprinters likely to line up in the final,
organizers even predict that all eight runners could dip under 11secs.
Among the
wheelchair racers, Britain’s David Weir, the T54 800m and 1,500m champion four
years ago, is set to renew his rivalries with Australia’s Kurt Fearnley and
Swiss world record holder Marcel Hug.
In the
pool, Ellie Simmonds has become a poster girl for the Games after winning two
golds in Beijing aged just 13.
But like
Pistorius — the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics and the
Paralympics’ biggest star — there are other big names.
South
Africa’s Natalie Du Toit is retiring after a decade at the top, while Matthew
Cowdrey — an eight-time gold medallist — needs just three more golds to surpass
athlete Tim Sullivan to become Australia’s most successful Paralympian.
London will
also see veteran medallists like shooter Jonas Jacobsson, dressage specialist
Lee Pearson and Dutch wheelchair tennis player Esther Vergeer going for gold
again alongside first-time athletes from smaller nations.
Now 47,
Sweden’s Jacobsson has competed in eight Paralympics and has 16 golds; Pearson,
of Britain, has won gold at every Games since Sydney 12 years ago; while
Vergeer won in 2000, 2004 and 2008 and is unbeaten in over 450 matches.
The US
Virgin Islands will have their first ever Paralympian in the shape of rider Lee
Frawley, while North Korea make its debut in the competition with swimmer Rim
Ju Song.
Some 200
athletes with intellectual disabilities will also compete for the first time
since Sydney and a scandal involving the eligibility of Spain’s basketball
team.
And while
every athlete has as much determination to overcome adversity as talent and
skill, few have as remarkable a backstory as Martine Wright, who lost her legs
in the 2005 suicide attacks in London — a day after the city was awarded the
Games.
She will be
a member of Britain’s sitting volleyball team.
London
organizing committee chairman Sebastian Coe has repeatedly maintained that the
Paralympics and the Olympics are two equal parts of the same event.
“We want to
change public attitudes towards disability, celebrate the excellence of
Paralympic sport and to enshrine from the very outset that the two Games are an
integrated whole,” he said.
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