I would never want to detract from another athlete’s moment of triumph and I want to apologise for the timing of my comments after yesterday’s race.
I do believe that there is an issue here and I welcome the opportunity to discuss with the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) but I accept that raising these concerns immediately as I stepped off the track was wrong.
That was Alan’s moment and I would like to put on record the respect I have for him.
I am a proud Paralympian and believe in the fairness of sport. I am happy to work with the IPC who obviously share these aims.
![Hawking, Pistorius open Paralympics
“Enlightenment” was the theme, physicist Stephen Hawking the guide and Olympic Stadium the venue Wednesday night as London welcomed 4,200 athletes from more than 160 nations to the 2012 Paralympic Games.
Who better to greet Paralympians than a scientist who has shown the world that physical disabilities do not limit human potential?
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“The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world. We are all different, there is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit,” said Hawking, who was given two years to live in 1963 after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
“What is important is that we have the ability to create … however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at,” he added.
The extravaganza, directed by Bradley Hemmings and Jenny Sealey, was billed as a voyage across “a sea of ideas” — including Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity, the force that all Earth-bound athletes strive against. The show included 73 deaf and disabled professional performers and 68 disabled people among its 3,250 volunteers.
The gala opened with a look at the Big Bang — considered the beginning of the universe — as a glowing sphere turned the stadium into a giant nebula.
In a nod to the famously erratic British weather, umbrellas were a central theme. Seeing performers with no legs beneath the knee doing aerial flips carrying umbrellas could inspire the most ardent couch potato.
Sebastian Coe, chief of the London organizing committee, issued a big welcome home “to a movement that shows what sport is all about.”
“Sport is about what you can do, what you can achieve, the limits you can reach, the barriers you can break. Sport shows what is possible. Sport refuses to take no for an answer,” Coe told the audience of 60,000.
The London event is on track to be the most-watched Paralympics ever, with 2.5 million tickets expected to be sold by the time it ends Sept. 9.
As the athletes paraded in under a full moon, a huge roar filled the stadium for South African flagbearer Oscar Pistorius, the sprinter who is making history by running in both the Olympics and the Paralympics this year. Glittery ticker tape and a standing ovation then greeted the enormous British team as they entered to the David Bowie song “Heroes.”
The parade took nearly an hour longer than expected, with athletes arriving in dozens of ways. Some came in motorized carts, others wheeled themselves in, still others were pushed by coaches or volunteers. They walked in with canes or crutches, eye patches and sunglasses, prosthetic limbs and walking sticks, determined to make it around the imposing stadium, welcomed by a global music mash-up by local DJs.
Blind soprano Denise Leigh then sang the tribute song “Spirit in Motion” and several Paralympians took flight in an elegant aerial display.
And of course, this being Britain, the words of Shakespeare once again made an appearance, with both Miranda of “The Tempest” and British actor Ian McKellen announcing that “the greatest adventure is what lies ahead.”
That, over the next 11 days, includes Paralympic athletes competing in 20 sports, including archery, cycling, rowing, equestrian, sailing, sitting volleyball, wheelchair rugby, wheelchair tennis and wheelchair basketball.
At the start, Hawking directed the fictional Miranda to “be curious” — and the stadium was transformed into a giant blinking eye, with performers on huge waving sticks acting like eyelashes.
Along her travels, the curious Miranda was to navigate a maze to find an apple — and everyone in the stadium was encouraged to take a bite out of the fruit they were given with her.
Other performers included soprano Elin Manahan Thomas, Beverley Knight, the British dance group Flawless and six London-based choirs.
Queen Elizabeth II said the nation looked forward to “celebrating the uplifting spirit which distinguishes the Paralympic Games from other events.” She was accompanied by her grandson, Prince William, his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Paralympic movement tracks its beginnings to the vision of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, who in 1948 organized an archery competition for 16 injured patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Britain.
Wednesday’s ceremony concluded with a bevy of fireworks and Miranda breaking a glass ceiling — just as Paralympians must smash through their own barriers.
Society, too, was encouraged to abandon old-fashioned perceptions of what disabled people can and cannot do.
Pistorius, in an earlier news conference, praised London for its inclusivity.
“Kids didn’t stare at people’s prosthetic legs and they were asking guys in wheelchairs what events they do,” Pistorius said. “There are a lot of people here who don’t focus on the disability anymore — they focus on the athletes’ abilities … there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
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Hawking, Pistorius open Paralympics
“Enlightenment” was the theme, physicist Stephen Hawking the guide and Olympic Stadium the venue Wednesday night as London welcomed 4,200 athletes from more than 160 nations to the 2012 Paralympic Games.
Who better to greet Paralympians than a scientist who has shown the world that physical disabilities do not limit human potential?
![‘Happy and glorious’ Olympics come to rocking end
The great festival that began with the stirring resonances of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony came to a poignant end with a light-hearted pageant of British popular culture.
An exploding Reliant Robin featured, along with Take That and the Spice Girls, the voices of John Lennon and Freddie Mercury, Tim Spall as Winston Churchill, Julian Lloyd Webber, Kate Moss in Alexander McQueen, an airborne Darcey Bussell, Madness, the Pet Shop Boys, Ray Davies singing Waterloo Sunset, and the thousands of athletes from 204 countries who had kept us enthralled and enraptured.
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To follow Boyle’s Isles of Wonder with Kim Gavin’s Symphony of British Music was a bit like switching from Ready Steady Go! to Top of the Pops, albeit with the same mind-boggling shuffling of scenery, dazzling choreography and brilliant use of lighting.
British sports cars of the 1960s circled the track and giant models of the Albert Hall and the Shard were replaced by a shattered sculpture reformed to create the face of Lennon while the crowd sang the words to Imagine.
It was, as promised, more cacophonous than symphonic. Bradley Wiggins will have loved the parade of 50 Vespas and Lambrettas, lights blazing and raccoon tails rampant, that accompanied Kaiser Chiefs’ ardent version of Pinball Wizard.
PHOTO: Jessie J performs during the closing ceremony at Olympic Park.
Jessie J, Tinie Tempah and Taio Cruz performed from moving Rolls-Royce convertibles, like an extended advert for the best of British bling, while Russell Brand sang I Am the Walrus from a psychedelic bus that metamorphosed into a giant transparent octopus from which Fatboy Slim delivered a short DJ set. When the Spice Girls sang from the top of black cabs, the Olympics seemed to have turned into the Motor Show.
Last of all, after the speeches, Rio de Janeiro’s preview of 2016 and the extinguishing of Thomas Heatherwick’s cauldron, came the surviving members of the Who, closing the Games with the adrenaline shot of My Generation, although the real anthem of London 2012 had undoubtedly been David Bowie’s Heroes.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8o1vr9pQW1rbh8f0o1_r1_500.png)
‘Happy and glorious’ Olympics come to rocking end
The great festival that began with the stirring resonances of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony came to a poignant end with a light-hearted pageant of British popular culture.
An exploding Reliant Robin featured, along with Take That and the Spice Girls, the voices of John Lennon and Freddie Mercury, Tim Spall as Winston Churchill, Julian Lloyd Webber, Kate Moss in Alexander McQueen, an airborne Darcey Bussell, Madness, the Pet Shop Boys, Ray Davies singing Waterloo Sunset, and the thousands of athletes from 204 countries who had kept us enthralled and enraptured.
LONDON 2012: A giant portrait of John Lennon is made with panels carried by performers during the closing ceremony.
If I ran for Sudan, I would be betraying my people. I would be dishonoring the two million people who died for our freedom. I want to bring honor to my country. People who just want glory, the spotlight of the Olympics, they don’t care about other people. I’m fighting for independent status because I do care. When I run, I want people to see me and say, ‘He is from South Sudan.’
![Nicola Adams wins historic boxing gold for Great Britain
Nicola Adams is a flat-footed asthmatic, a bubbling flyweight confection of unaffected charisma who makes every room and boxing ring she enters her personal property with a smile of serious wattage. She is as normal as a cup of tea and more special than she might ever have imagined, never more so than when holding an Olympic gold medal on Thursday night, a first among firsts, not only breaking the duck for the Great Britainsquad at these Games but leading the way for her sport.
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Hours later it was still hanging from her neck, a reminder of the heroics she performed over eight minutes in front of 16,000 throat-sore converts to her discipline in the ExCeL, as she emphatically turned back the challenge of China’s Ren Cancan, knocking the three-time world champion on her backside along the way, to win 16-7.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” Adams said, the ritual response to the ritual question. “Maybe later, when I might even have a few drinks … Why not, eh?”
Her laughter filled the room, just as her punches had filled the ring. This was not the conclusion of her story but certainly the highest point to date. She says there is more to come.
“How cool would it to be to win two Olympic gold medals? It’s never been done in our sport before, so I am going to go for it.” Clearly, becoming the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold medal has tapped into the natural energy of this very fine athlete.
There were no dreams, though, just an instinct that boxing and her were meant for each other, when her mother, Denver, took a then 12-year-old Nicola to the gym in Leeds 17 years ago. It was not to mould a champion, Denver said, but to “give her something to do”.
PHOTO: Nicola Adams (right) of Great Britain and Ren Cancan of China contest the first ever Olympic women’s Boxing final in the women’s Fly (51kg).
The journey to the podium in east London on Thursday night has taken in the struggle against resistance to even her presence in the male preserve of boxing and a back injury that laid her out for three months in 2009 after she had tumbled down the stairs at home and endured the rehab that shaped her into the champion she is at 29.
“Now I will aim for Rio in 2016,” she said, still struggling to take in the magnitude of her achievement but conscious of her contribution to women’s boxing. “Knowing that young girls might be inspired to take up the sport is as good as winning this medal,” she added, still clinging to the gold that will define her forever.
“I would love it if there were girls who watched that fight and thought, ‘Yes, I can do that.’ I got my inspiration when I sat down with my father, at about eight or nine years old, and watched The Rumble in the Jungle. It was amazing watching Muhammad Ali. I watched tapes of Sugar Ray Robinson too – what a terrific left hook.
“I hope, too, that winning here will inspire the rest of the guys and we can get even more gold. I will tell them to relax, keep their focus and they are bound to box at their best. It has been great working with all of them.”
But the smiling star from Yorkshire – “Northerners, eh?” she laughed – is more than just a boxer, although she is supremely gifted at that, and she was only half-joking when she said later that winning this medal may well get her some bigger acting parts than those she has had as an extra in Coronation Street and Emmerdale.
PHOTO: Nicola Adams of Great Britain celebrates her gold medal victory (Getty)
She was headed for a night out with family and friends, then would make plans for a holiday, “although I don’t know where”. She wanted to get home to her dog, Dexter, and would drape that precious medal around his neck for a bit.
What made her day so memorable, though, were not just the details of her story to this point but what she produced in the ring against a formidable opponent.
Boxing calmly at distance, she took the first round 4-2, her shots landing cleanly and, more importantly, visibly. The judges have not always been alert in this tournament.
The bout went dramatically in her favour halfway through round two when she landed a peach of a left to the chin of the Chinese southpaw, followed by a right to the temple as she tottered backwards, and Ren was looking at the action from a horizontal position. Adams deserved more than a 5-2 margin, though.
In the third Adams went looking for her now slightly reticent opponent.
Ren’s attacks were reduced to wild swings as she sought to make up the deficit and she was an even easier target. Adams danced away from the uglier exchanges and found openings on the counter to lead 14-5 going into the fourth round. A belting left down the pipe unsettled Ren and Adams walked back to the corner in jubilant mood.
She knew not to discount Ren, against whom she has won and lost before, but, husbanding a nine-point lead, she had little more to do than stay out of trouble.
Even so, she could not resist a flourish at the end and, like all good boxers – like the great Sugar Ray – she finished with a left hook.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8il0kTwVw1rbh8f0o1_r2_500.png)
Nicola Adams wins historic boxing gold for Great Britain
Nicola Adams is a flat-footed asthmatic, a bubbling flyweight confection of unaffected charisma who makes every room and boxing ring she enters her personal property with a smile of serious wattage. She is as normal as a cup of tea and more special than she might ever have imagined, never more so than when holding an Olympic gold medal on Thursday night, a first among firsts, not only breaking the duck for the Great Britainsquad at these Games but leading the way for her sport.
![Sarah Attar becomes Saudi Arabia’s first female track Olympian
Sarah Attar became the first female track and field athlete to represent Saudi Arabia at an Olympics when she competed in the 800 metres heats on Wednesday.
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The 19-year-old, who wore a white head cover, a long sleeved green top and black leggings and sported luminous green running spikes, received a generous ovation from a capacity-crowd at the Olympic stadium as she trailed in last of the eight runners.
“It’s an incredible experience,” Attar, who has dual United States citizenship and is a student at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, told reporters.
Attar, who clocked two minutes 44.95 seconds - over 43 seconds behind heat winner Janeth Jepkosgei Busienei of Kenya, is the second Saudi woman to compete at the Games following judoka Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shaherkani.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had extended a special invitation to Shaherkani and Attar after it pressed Saudi Arabia to end its ban on female participation.
Some conservative Saudis had criticised their countrywomen’s participation in London after Saudi Arabia broke with its practice of sending male-only teams to the world’s biggest sports event.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8h01c94r21rbh8f0o1_500.png)
Sarah Attar becomes Saudi Arabia’s first female track Olympian
Sarah Attar became the first female track and field athlete to represent Saudi Arabia at an Olympics when she competed in the 800 metres heats on Wednesday.
BREAKING NEWS: Andy Murray wins gold medal match against Roger Federer. (6-2, 6-1, 6-4)
![LONDON 2012: Venus and Serena Williams win Olympic gold
Serena Williams teamed with big sister Venus to win the women’s doubles title at the Olympics on Sunday, adding to the gold she won a day earlier in singles.
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The American sisters beat Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4 under the roof on a rainy afternoon at the All England Club. Venus closed out the match with a backhand volley winner after the Czechs saved a pair of match points.
On Saturday, Serena beat Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1 for the singles gold. She joined Steffi Graf as the only women to complete the Golden Slam — winning the Olympics and the four majors.
Serena became tennis’ first double gold medalist at an Olympics since Venus won singles and doubles at the 2000 Sydney Games. The sisters also won the doubles gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Williams sisters didn’t drop a set through their five Olympic matches at Wimbledon.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8aa598qUt1rbh8f0o1_500.png)
LONDON 2012: Venus and Serena Williams win Olympic gold
Serena Williams teamed with big sister Venus to win the women’s doubles title at the Olympics on Sunday, adding to the gold she won a day earlier in singles.
Picture of the Day: U.S. fencer Weston Kelsey looks on during his match against Estonia’s Nikolai Novosjolov in the men’s individual épée fencing competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
