[ihasa]

The Olympics and Paralympics have drawn to a close. The level of public interest in the Paralympics, and wall-to-wall prime-time TV coverage, has been especially eye-opening. My favourite moment was this guy - apparently hurting his foot before the race, he came a very distant last, but never for a moment gave up running - propelled along by the loudly cheering crowd: Omar Hassan: Huge applause for disabled 1500m competitor who finished SEVEN MINUTES adrift of race rivals | Mail Online.

Rather than viewing the Paralympics as a poor second to the Olympics, people have responsed with passion to the sporting achievements, with packed stadiums and massive roars to easily rival the Olympics.

Paralympic sport has gone mainstream

The 2.7m people who thronged the venues for the Paralympics may have bought their tickets for all sorts of reasons. Some wanted a cheap family day out, others had missed out on tickets to what they saw as the main event. But all soon became enraptured by the sport on show. Soon enough the Park echoed to the sound of groups of ticketholders discussing David Weir's tactics or waxing lyrical about Ellie Simmonds's turn of speed, as well as the inspirational life stories of those involved. That they no longer saw any differentiation between Olympic and Paralympic sport is one of the enduring triumphs of the second act of London's sporting summer. All involved claimed a lasting impact on perceptions of Paralympic sport and disability. The huge challenge, both for ParalympicsGB and for the International Paralympic Committee, is to work out how to use the momentum generated if they are not to slip from view for another four years. There are pressing issues around classification and technology to deal with and much work to be done to develop a competitive and media friendly programme of international events. But London is a great launch pad.

The effect of the prominence of the Paralympics must be a great thing for promoting understanding of issues around disabled people's rights. It was particularly impressive to see many developing countries coming through and taking home medals.

Take Nigeria - no medals in the Olympics but 12 medals (six of them gold) in the Paralympics. And Nigeria's GDP per capita is around seven times smaller than Mexico's, which also got six golds. Its comparative spending on healthcare is 10 times smaller.

Rwanda, Bosnia Herzegovina, Iran and Iraq also stand out - they've all entered more athletes into the Paralympics than the Olympics.

And for Iran this paid off, as they finished joint 10th in the final medals table.

But although the USA didn't do too badly, how come they have come behind China, Russia, GB, the Ukraine, and Australia in the rankings? (The UK came third in both Olympics and Paralympics, which isn't too bad for a country our size - looks like all that 'socialist' investment in sports paid off!)

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Last edited by ihasa; 09-11-2012 at 08:06 AM.