China 1

This place is magnificent in the scale of the way it does things and there is an energy here that isn’t obvious everywhere else I go.

 

The Beijing Paralympic Games is being hosted on a grand scale, the event locations are grand and superb: talk about photogenic. I have been over to the water cube (cube? Whoever named it the cube must have been away sick when they were supposed to be learning about shapes in maths at school. It’s a cuboid) twice. The aquatic centre, to give its proper name, is right next door to the bird’s nest stadium and together they make up a magnificent spectacle at night. Thousands of people throng there too to enjoy the sights and the music driven water fountains.

 

I have been to watch some swimming events then and they are brilliant. Can you imagine winning a man with no arms winning the backstroke event? It happened. Can you imagine someone who is wheelchair bound winning the 100 metres freestyle event? It happened. These athletes are serious people. Life has cut them a dashing blow from birth or as the result of an accident but that didn’t leave them rotting in bed and wondering what to do. They have taken life at the full and they are doing something positive.

 

I watched the men’s Boccia final last night: a game akin to crown green and flat green bowling. The two Portuguese gentlemen in the final were wheelchair bound and clearly severely disabled. There they were though, playing this game to a high standard and giving it there all. I have said it before and I will say it again: those lousy young people in the UK and the rest of the world who mope around with “nothing to do” need to watch these athletes and think again.

 

On a thread on the Have your Say section of the BBC website there was a woman who said it is sick that the Paralympics is being held at all. I know who is the more sick don’t you? I couldn’t respond to that woman at the time but there were lots of people who put her properly and firmly in her place.

 

DW