Everything you need to know about the London 2012 Paralympics

With exhilarating events like Powerlifting, the insanely fast-paced Wheelchair Basketball, and 5-a-side Football in which players are blindfolded, we can’t wait to see what’s set to be the biggest, most watched Paralympics on record.

How it began
In 1948 Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and the Stoke Mandeville Hospital organised an athletics event for British World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries to coincide with the 1948 Olympic Games in London. Guttmann’s plan was to encourage spine injury patients to be more active and increase their life expectancy which, at the time, was just two years. The plan worked, and Dr Guttmann’s 1948 International Wheelchair Games became the Paralympic Games, the first of which took place in 1960 in Rome.
- Image: The British Paralympics team en route to Tokyo in 1964
The Events
- The London 2012 Paralympic Games will feature 21 events testing athletes’ precision, speed, strength and nerve in a whole new way to the Olympic activities we’ve just seen. Five-a-side Football and Goalball will see visually impaired athletes play blindfolded (to standardise visibility) with a ball that has a noise-making device inside. Powerlifting, a bench-pressing activity, will test the pure upper body strength of athletes. And then there’s athletics, of course, in which athletes variously compete in wheel chairs, with throwing frames, prostheses or with a fully-sighted running companion for the visually impaired. Excited much?
The torch

The Paralympic torch, a silver version of the Olympic torch, has a mirrored surface so that it adapts to its surroundings. The flame will be lit in the Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Buckinghamshire, home of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann’s 1948 International Wheelchair Games, and will be carried by 580 torchbearers in a 24 hour relay on 28th August that will include the lighting of four giant cauldrons at the highest peaks of the four UK nations: England’s Scafell Pike, Wales’s Snowdon, Scotland’s Ben Nevis and Northern Island’s Slieve Donard.
The opening ceremony
- A ceremony called ‘Enlightenment’ includes a fly past by Aerobility, a British charity that trains disabled people to become pilots. There were acrobatic performances on a 35 metre-high rig above the stadium floor and 3,000 volunteers took part. The Australian team were led by flag bearer and wheelchair rugby player Greg Smith, a five-time Paralympian. The majority of Australia's 161 athletes attended Wednesday's opening ceremony, with only a couple of athletics competitors and the Day 1 and 2 athletes absent.
The audience
- The London 2012 Paralympics is set to be the biggest yet. With a whopping 2.2 million of the 2.5 million tickets already sold, it’s on track to be the first ever sold out Paralympics in its 52 year history. This is hugely exciting, especially given that organisers at the Beijing Paralympics resorted to giving out tickets for free to fill seats.
The broadcaster
- The Australian broadcast of the games will be on ABC1 and ABC2. The ABC will show over 100 hours of exclusive coverage throughout the games with commentary by Stephanie Brantz, Lawrence Mooney, Adam Zwar and Sam Pang. Monopedal Aussie Adam Hills will also be in the commentary booth, for Britain's Channel 4.
The teams
- 15 countries are entering the Paralympics for the first time including North Korea, Antigua and Barbuda, and Brunei, making it the biggest Paralympics yet in terms of the number of countries competing. China topped the medal table in Beijing with Great Britain ranking second and USA third. Will the home crowd cheer Team GB to top spot this year? Or will Australia's Paralympians show the Olympians how it's done?
Familiar faces
- If you think you’ve seen this man before it’s because you have, a couple of weeks ago! South African Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee known as 'Blade Runner' due to his carbon fibre running blades, will return from competing in the London 2012 Olympics to take part in the Paralympics. And while he is the first sprinter to compete in both events, he rejects any comparison of the two. ‘To me, a race is a race,’ he says. ‘People will admire the athletes for what they achieve, not focusing on their disability.’
Team GB

Unfortunately, after surpassing all expectations at the Olympics, Britain's performance may be better yet at the Paralympics. The GB Paralympic team’s strengths traditionally lie in Cycling, Swimming, Rowing, Equestrian and Athletics. Ones to watch include Beijing Gold champion cyclist Jody Cundy, 19-year-old super fast sprinter Jonnie Peacock, and not forgetting of course swimming super star Ellie Simmons (pictured) who was just 13 years old when she won a double gold in Beijing.