导出博客文章Welcome to the fastest-growing event in world sport, a multi-sport competition
between athletes of extraordinary talent, courage and determination who will
hold a cumulative TV audience of four billion people across the globe spellbound
this summer when they perform in Rio de Janeiro.Time to marvel once again, then,
at the wonders of the Paralympic Games.It is hard to credit that it was only
three generations ago in 1948 that this burgeoning phenomenon all started with
just 14 men and two women shooting arrows at a target from a wheelchair, cheered
on only by a small bunch of enthusiastic spectators and quite invisible to the
public beyond the English hospital grounds where the quaint fete took place.Yet
when it rolls up in Brazil this summer, the event which had begun as those 1948
Stoke Mandeville Games, a novel competition for injured ex-servicemen at a
spinal injuries unit who had taken up wheelchair archery to boost their
rehabilitation, will have mushroomed into a spectacular festival featuring 4,350
athletes in 22 different sports from more than 160 countries.No sports event on
the planet has been transformed so completely, so hugely or so swiftly. None,
too, is still evolving as quickly to the point where officials of the
International Paralympic Committee (IPC) believe their showpiece could
eventually overtake the football World Cup as the worlds second-biggest sporting
event in terms of ticket sales behind only the Olympics.Talk about humble,
primitive beginnings. In 1960, when the first Paralympics were held in Rome,
Britains first-ever gold medallist Margaret Maughan still smiles at the memory
of the almost comical operation needed just to get the 70-strong team hoisted up
to the aircraft doors in a cage on a fork-lift truck to fly them to their
venue.Once in Italy, Roman soldiers then had to carry athletes over their
shoulders just to get them to their rooms, so ill-equipped was the Games to
house the athletes. As for Margaret, she didnt even know she had won her archery
competition because nobody had told her her scores and she only discovered the
news when officials came looking for her and had to carry her and her hefty
wheelchair off the coach to the medal ceremony!It all seems an unreal world away
from the slick spectacular planned for 2016, which will showcase
state-of-the-art facilities, see full-time athletes taking advantage of space
age-designed equipment like ￡2,000 lightweight racing wheelchairs and watch a
standard of record-breaking sport that would have seemed inconceivable
half-a-century ago.We know Rio 2016 will be the most widely broadcast
Paralympics in history, enthuses Sir Philip Craven, the President of the IPC,
noting that between 120 and 150 nations will screen the event this year compared
to 100 in the last edition in London 2012. For the first time, America will be
on board for major coverage too.This explosion of interest, believes Craven, a
former Paralympian himself in three different sports, is down to the
dramatically improving performances of para-athletes, the majority of whom now
benefit from high-performance training programmes on a par with their Olympic
counterparts.To give you one example, he says, at the Atlanta 96 Paralympic
Games, the mens 100 metres T44 for below-knee leg amputees was won in a world
record 11.36 seconds. At Rio 2016, the US world champion Richard Browne is fully
confident he can lower his own world record of 10.61 seconds to below 10.5.To
knock nearly one second off a 100m world record in 20 years is a staggering
achievement and highlights that para-athletes are getting faster, stronger and
more agile all the time. Indeed, there are those who are firm believers that in
25 years the fastest man in the world could well be a Paralympian.And with the
stellar performances comes the making of stars. One survey showed that less than
one per cent of the British population could name a Paralympian before the 2012
Games whereas afterwards 31 per cent of the population could name at least
five.Paralympians, like BP ambassadors, have a profile like never before.
Athletes like Marlou van Rhijn, the Dutch sprinter now famed globally as the
Blade Babe have become role models. Others, like Trinidadian swimmer Shanntol
Ince have turned into national heroes. Some, like US wheelchair racing legend
Tatyana McFadden have been social trailblazers as well as the rarest of sporting
champions.All of which has led to the increasing realisation that no sporting
event actually does more to break down walls of prejudice and discrimination and
to change ill-informed, deep-rooted views in society regarding disability than
this event.We are the worlds number one sporting event for driving social
inclusion and thats a position we want to cement further in Rio, Craven
explained recently in a speech in Brazil.For many Brazilians, Rio 2016 will be
their first experience of Paralympic sport and will be uncertain of what to
expect. I can promise you a life-changing experience that will make you
re-evaluate what you believe is humanly possible.You will see sport like never
before and witness some of the best athletic performances ever delivered.This is
hard to dispute - and so is the reality that Paralympians are now constantly
challenging and changing perceptions of sport and of disabilities.A third of
Britons questioned after 2012 said theyd altered their attitude towards people
with a disability because of the Games. Thats 20 million people at a stroke.Four
years earlier, following the Beijing Games, a Chinese government official said
the perception of a person with a disability had changed there from wretched
street beggar to a brilliant footballer, shooter or long jumper. Theres been
compelling evidence too that thousands of people with a disability have been
able to find jobs more easily because Chinese employers had changed their
outlook.Of course, it would be foolish to suggest that the Paralympics doesnt
still have a long, hard road to travel before it helps eradicate the prejudice,
ignorance and even hostility towards people with disabilities.There is something
about this event which should give everyone hope. Craven thinks everything
changed in 1992 in the Barcelona edition when a brilliant organising committee
turned the Games into a marketable proposition for the first time, with free
tickets being handed out and more than a million people flocking to watch the
action.It was there that Dr Stephen Hawking, the great physicist and cosmologist
who is paralysed from motor neurone disease, struck a cord by telling the world
at the opening ceremony: Each one has within us the spark of fire, a creative
touch.That energy burning within its incredible competitors is the fuel that
makes these Games great, that is pushing the event into uncharted territory. Rio
will be the biggest yet but Tokyo 2020, with the commercial backing and
sponsorships already in place, will dwarf it further. The future of the
Paralympian movement, says Craven, could be exhilarating.At the Olympic Games,
the motto is citius, altius, fortius but while Paralympians too become ever
faster, higher, stronger at each edition, there is something else that sets
their Games apart. Its almost indefinable, a soaring feeling at the events heart
which the Paralympics own motto Spirit in Motion somehow captures so well.It was
as Craven told the world from the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing at the start of
the 2008 Games: Above all, when we come together we will be part of a creation
of an almost touchable and definitely breathable, distinctive energy source
which is at the heart of the Paralympic movement - and its what we call the
Paralympic spirit.And once it gets hold, you can never let it go. It will last
you a lifetime.Click here for more exclusive content
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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Coach Rex Ryan said Thursday the Buffalo Bills are hopeful
running back LeSean McCoy will be able to play Sunday against the Miami Dolphins
after injuring his hamstring in Wednesdays practice.McCoy, who Ryan said did not
suffer a full blown hamstring injury, did not participate in Thursdays practice
but watched part of the session from the sideline.Well see how he progresses the
next couple of days, Ryan said Thursday. Hopefully we get him back
[Sunday].Offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn wants to be cautious with McCoys
injury. When Lynn served as running backs coach last season, McCoy strained his
hamstring in training camp and the injury lingered into the regular season,
keeping the star runner out two games in October.I dont want to do what we did
last year, Lynn said Thursday. Going in, playing 85 percent, reinjuring the
hamstring and then this thing lingers all year. We just want to get him well and
back on the field.In addition to McCoy, the Bills were without top receiver
Robert Woods (foot) and defensive tackle Marcell Dareus (hamstring) in Thursdays
practice.dddddddddddd. Tight end Charles Clay (ankle) returned to practice after
sitting out Wednesday.Woods remained in a walking boot in the locker room
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play Sunday but acknowledging that he has yet to test his injured foot in
practice this week. Woods indicated that X-rays did not reveal any broken bones
in his foot.I dont think theres a huge concern long term, Ryan said Thursday,
adding that Woods has yet to be ruled out for the game.If the Bills are without
McCoy, the team is expected to start Mike Gillislee at running back. Marquise
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