Paralympic Games: Paralympics set to be best yet as record sales expected

By MARTYN MCLAUGHLIN
Published on 28/08/2012 00:57

INTERNATIONAL Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Philip Craven has said he is optimistic the London 2012 Paralympics will be the best yet, as tens of thousands of last-minute tickets were snapped up.

London will welcome a record-breaking number of athletes and participating countries – 4,200 athletes and 166 national Paralympic committees – and the IPC is encouraged by strong ticket sales and broadcast deals ahead of tomorrow’s opening ceremony.

Mr Craven said: “All the ingredients are there for the best Paralympic Games. The athletes come first. If it is right for the athletes, everything else falls into place.”

He said the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) had “placed the athletes at the centre of the Games”.

Mr Craven added: “Ticket sales are at 2.4 million now and we have record broadcast deals. It is time for the athletes to deliver and I am sure they will.”

London 2012 chairman 
Sebastian Coe said the organising committee was “on target to have record tickets sales”.

Lord Coe revealed that 50,000 of the 70,000 tickets made 
available on the London 2012 website on Sunday night had gone by 8am yesterday morning. About half a million tickets had been sold to fans from overseas.

China topped the medals table in Beijing, with 211, ahead of Great Britain, with 102, and the United States, with 99, and Mr Craven expects the Chinese to also dominate in London .

UK Sport set the British team a target of at least 103 medals and Mr Craven said he believed that will not be easy to achieve.

“A repeat performance by the British team when other countries are coming up fast on the rails will be difficult,” he said.

“They are going to have go some to do it. The USA are coming back very strongly, and 
Brazil will have a bigger team than ever.

“We also have 16 new countries taking part, including eight from Africa, and that excites me as much as the big countries’ battle for medals.”

Meanwhile, plans have been announced for up to 800 athletes to travel on 21 floats in a victory parade to celebrate the achievements of British Olympians and Paralympians.

The Our Greatest Team Parade, organised by the Mayor of London in conjunction with the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association, will take place on 10 September.

Team GB finished third in the medal table after winning 29 gold medals, 17 silvers and 19 bronzes.

The parade, which will 
set off from Mansion House in the City of London at 1:30pm, will be organised by sport, with medal winners across the length of the parade, according to the Greater London Authority.

London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “In the ancient world, crowds would line the streets to welcome their triumphant Olympians home, where they would be ecstatically venerated and their victories chronicled for the ages, with names like Leonidas of Rhodes and Milo of Kroton reverberating through history.

“But no sporting heroes will have been more lauded, no achievements more celebrated, and no nation more passionately proud than at the Our Greatest Team Parade, which will sweep through central London in a glorious miasma of colour, noise and excitement.”