The London Paralympics 2012



Sarah Storey
(ib times.com)

BBC: London 2012 saw swimmer turned cyclist Sarah Storey ride into the record books, equalling the 11 career gold medals won by Britain's top modern-day Paralympians Baroness Tanni-Grey Thompson and Dave Roberts.
Sprinter Jonnie Peacock, aged 19, beat three-time Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius to become the fastest amputee sprinter in the world. Peacock took the 100m T44 gold in a world-record time. Among a host of heroes, wheelchair athlete David Weir collected four golds - proving as adept in the 800m as in the marathon - while Ellie Simmonds was twice a Paralympic champion in the pool.  Read the rest of the article here.



Ellie Simmonds
(bbc.co.uk)

 Guardian: ' Those who made the stadium roar on Thursday night for David Weir, Hannah Cockroft and Jonnie Peacock were cheering the way they had for Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Greg Rutherford on that super Saturday night in August: for supreme athletes of strength, power and grace . . .  The name Paralympics hardly does the event justice: they are not to the Olympics what a paralegal is to a lawyer. In some ways, they are a more extreme version: they are the ultra-Olympics . . . Britain embraced these Paralympic Games as no other nation has. The venues were packed, that 2.4m figure five times as large as the 480,000 advance tickets sold in Beijing in 2008. The difference in treatment has been visible in media coverage too. In Britain it's been wall-to-wall on Channel 4 and with big, poster-style front pages on many of the newspapers. In the US the rights-holding network NBC has not covered the Paralympics at all . . . Read the rest of the article here.



David Weir
(Daily Telegraph)

 Daily Telegraph: 'When the action finally ceased, the country’s Paralympians had piled up 120 medals: 34 of them gold. Though they fell from second in Beijing (2008) to third in the medal table, behind China and Russia, they easily surpassed the 102 medals of four years ago. In the Olympics, Britain won 65 medals and 29 golds to finish third to USA and China: easily their best performance . . . The kind of patriotism that energised the venues was benign, considerate, polite and appreciative. Even the most sober commentators acknowledged a surge in positive feeling about the country we inhabit. Austerity, corruption and ineptitude turn out not to be the main picture. The mass of British people still believe in the civilizing virtues of friendliness, enthusiasm and respect for the achievements of others.' Read the rest of the article here.

Jonnie Peacock
(brecorder.com)