The London 2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony starts in around one hour's time, at about 20:30 British time. They will be the first Paralympics to be held in Britain since Stoke Mandeville, the Buckinghamshire town where the first Paralympics were held for injured British soldiers in 1948, co-hosted them in 1984 with New York City.
These Paralympics will be the biggest ever in terms of number of countries taking part (19 more than Beijing including 15 taking part for the first time); in terms of number of athletes taking part (around 4,200); and in terms of the number of spectators to attend (it looks as though it will be the first Paralympics ever to be sold out).
The Paralympic torch relay began on 22 August, when groups of
scouts (both disabled and
non-disabled) kindled the four Paralympic flames on the highest peaks of each nation of the United Kingdom; Scafell Pike in England, Ben Nevis in Scotland, Slieve Donard in Northern Ireland, and Snowdon in Wales. Following the ceremonial lightings of Paralympic torches, the four flames were then brought down from each peak in a lantern. On 24 August the flames were used to light ceremonial cauldrons in their respective capital cities (London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff) during "Flame Festival" events. A total of 38 towns and cities also hosted "Flame Celebration" events over the bank holiday weekend (the weekend just gone), where community representatives collected a part of their nation's flame to bring back for their respective events.
Yesterday a ceremony was held at Stoke Mandeville Stadium to welcome the Paralympic flames and honour the village's role in the history of the Paralympics (it was where the Paralympics were born). The four flames were united in a cauldron at precisely 20:12 to form a single Paralympic flame used for the torch relay. The four flames were brought into the stadium by dignitaries, which included English model Katie Piper (who began campaigning for burn victims after she was disfigured by having acid thrown in her face by her ex-boyfriend) and Scottish amateur boxer Jonjo Look (who had a leg amputated and replaced by a prosthesis following an accident filling a gas canister).
The flame travelled a 92-mile route to London's Olympic Stadium in 24 hours in a relay that involved 580 different torchbearers in teams of five which passed by famous London landmarks.
Here's more about the opening ceremony:
Paralympics opening ceremony 2012: a 'brave new world'
The Paralympic Games will open tonight with a “spectacular” ceremony starring disabled acrobats, injured soldiers and Prof Stephen Hawking as it celebrates achievement against all odds.
The Cauldron is lit in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, the birthplace of the Paralympics Photo: PA/Ben Birchall
By
Victoria Ward
29 Aug 2012
The Telegraph
The ceremony, titled Enlightenment, will feature stars from the worlds of science, sport and music and pay tribute to the discoveries of (British) figures such as Sir Isaac Newton and William Harvey (who was the first person to completely describe blood circulation).
The Paralympic torch relay began on 22 August, when groups of scouts (both disabled and non-disabled) kindled the four Paralympic flames on the highest peaks of each nation of the United Kingdom; Scafell Pike in England, Ben Nevis in Scotland, Slieve Donard in Northern Ireland, and Snowdon in Wales. Here it is on Snowdon.
Prof Hawking, 70, or at the very least his distinctive computerised voice, is expected to feature in the show, as are a group of disabled artists supported by a cast of 3,000 volunteers.
Fifty disabled performers, including non-competing Paralympians and rehabilitating soldiers who have learnt circus skills from scratch, will appear in an acrobatic performance on a 35-metre (114ft) high rig above the stadium floor.
In an echo of Danny Boyle’s hugely successful Olympics opening ceremony Isles of Wonder, the show will be based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
But organisers have disclosed that tonight’s show will be “more thoughtful” than Boyle’s action-packed creation, focusing specifically on Britain’s history of science and discovery.
The show, which will be attended by the Queen and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will begin with a fly-past by Aerobility, a charity that trains disabled people to become pilots (below).
Nicola Miles-Wildin, a young disabled actress who will play the central character of Miranda, Prospero’s daughter in The Tempest, will then launch proceedings with the bard’s lines: “O wonder! How many goodly creatures there are here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in’t!”
The athletes, from 166 countries, will enter the stadium earlier than during the Olympics opening ceremony, before sitting on the track to form part of the audience. The Thomas Heatherwick-designed cauldron that was used during the Olympics will be relit using the Paralympic flame but will feature only 166 of its 205 “petals”, reflecting the smaller number of competing countries.
Sebastian Coe, head of the London Olympics and Paralympics organising committee, said of the ceremony: “It focuses on that extraordinary period in European history and the great intellectual revolution that took place between 1550 and 1720. Everything from Newton making sense of gravity and motion to Napier with logarithms and Harvey with blood circulation.
“It’s really about ceilings, about human understanding, about limitations and the importance of knowledge. Within that period some quite profound things were being said about the rights of man. You can probably gather what it’s trying to say.”
The arrival of the flame will mark the occasion when the Paralympic Games, which began as the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948, come home. The artistic directors, Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings, said in a joint statement that they were determined to make Britain proud and wanted to transform the perception of disabled people “in this country and beyond”.
“We want our ceremony to be both spectacular and deeply human. Having worked together over a number of years we’re determined the ceremony should speak from the heart, tell a story, showcase our world-leading deaf and disabled artists and rise to the emotional and historic occasion of the homecoming of the Paralympics.”
The ceremony will begin what is already the most successful Paralympics ever in terms of ticket sales, with a record-breaking 2.2 million sold.
Paralympics opening ceremony 2012: a 'brave new world' - Telegraph
