Record-Breaking Paralympics Popular in Greece
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
The closing celebrations of the 2004 Paralympics were curtailed on September 28, in memory of Greek children who were killed in a bus accident on their way to the event. Thousands of Greek schoolchildren were sponsored to attend the sports event, as their first and quite upbeat introduction to disability.
Overall, the Paralympics were considered an unparalleled success, selling over 800,000 tickets, attracting 50 broadcasters and 3200 media representatives. The 2004 event broke a lot of records, including: participation by athletes from 136 nations (compared to 123 in Sydney in 2000), athletes totaled 3969 (compared to 3843 in Sydney), 304 world records broken and 448 Paralympic records broken.
Medals, rankings
One of the biggest surprises was the number of medals won by Chinese athletes: 141 total, extraordinary considering that 80% of their 200 athletes were competing in a Paralympics for the first time, and that they competed in only 11 of the 19 events. This new sports powerhouse is obviously on the fast-track, readying for the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing.
The next four countries in the rankings of total medals were: Australia (100), USA (88), Britain (94), and Canada (72). Concerning gold medals, the rankings are slightly different: China (63), Britain (35), Canada (28), USA (27) and Australia (26).
The top multi-medallist in the Games was swimmer Mayumi Narita of Japan who earned 7 gold medals and 1 bronze.
Symposium on Human Rights
A symposium was held during the Paralympics to bring together the disability sports leadership with organizations involved in the UN Convention on Human Rights of Disabled Persons. Jointly organized by the International Paralympic Committee and RI (www.riglobal.org), symposium speakers included Prince Raad of Jordan; Adolf Ogi, special advisor to the UN Secretary General on sports and former President of Switzerland; and Shuaib Chalklen of South Africa, director of the secretariat for the African Decade of Disabled Persons; Etiene Krug, director of prevention of injuries and violence, World Health Organization; and Cheri Blauwet, U.S. Paralympian and international disability rights advocate. More than 300 people attended and an additional 2300 viewers were able to take part through a live web-cast.
Media coverage
Many countries, especially in the European region, carried nightly TV coverage of the two week event. For example, the BBC was broadcasting regularly from Athens, and we heard from Russian friends that they were watching nightly reports. The U.S. had no regular coverage, earning criticism from other countries because the U.S. is a contender for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Recent reports are that there will be a 2 hour summary of the event, broadcast in November in the U.S., but probably on a cable channel.
Certainly, some good local U.S. stories went uncovered, such as Tatyana McFadden, a Washington, D.C. area teenager who earned medals in track and field events from her wheelchair. She was adopted as a toddler from Russia by Deborah McFadden, a U.S. disability rights leader.
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