Thursday 18 September 2008

Paralympic Power

So the Paralympics are over and China did another great job not only at hosting, but collecting the medals! They won no less than 219 in total. We also did fantastic finishing second on the medals table behind the hosts with an amazing 102 medals.

There are too many outstanding performances to mention, but the ones that stood out for me excluding the visually impaired were 13 year old Elle Simmons getting 2 gold's in the pool and us winning 13 out of 14 gold's in the cycling.

Obviously, I was most interested in the visually impaired, but was disappointed with our lack of participation. The B1 football team didn't really shine and I believe we won one medal in the judo. Out of 33 swimming events for the VI we had 3 competitors all in the B3 (S13) sight category winning zero medals. On the track we had 5 participants and Libby Clegg did really well to get silver in the T12 100m. She did a PB every round, so you can't ask for more than that! Finally, Aileen McGlee won 2 gold's in the tandeming.

Watching all of this has undoubtedly inspired me even more to want to achieve high in athletics. I've now seen my competition and know what I need to do. My PA Courtney starts on Monday and I look forward to getting down to some serious training. I want to be there in 2012 and know I will feel awful if I'm not. I will still try and improve at Goalball and I have no more excuses of why I can't succeed. Well, except that I need to get over my cold first!

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