Crowds welcome Paralympic torch to London

LONDON: Thousands of people lined Britain’s streets yesterday to welcome the Paralympic flame as it arrived in London ahead of the games’ opening ceremony.
The flame, which is being carried by some 580 torchbearers in total, visited London landmarks including the Abbey Road crosswalk made famous by The Beatles. The relay will end at the Olympic Stadium in east London.
Organizers were trying to make sure the flame will arrive on time for last night’s opening ceremony — the relay was running around two hours late.
The London Organizing Committee said that as a contingency plan, officials had arranged for part of the flame to be sent to the stadium separately to make sure the ceremony could start on time. The relay would continue, organizers said.
The 24-hour torch relay began Tuesday night in Stoke Mandeville, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of London, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.
Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge are expected to join thousands at the opening show, which will kick off 11 days of competition featuring 4,300 athletes from more than 160 countries.
Stephen Hawking, Britain’s greatest living scientist, is to play a starring role in the opening ceremony.
Organizers said Hawking, who has motor neurone disease and has been paralyzed for most of his life, would guide a central character on a journey of discovery in a story inspired by William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
“What came through to us was the humanity and humor of Professor Hawking,” said Bradley Hemmings, the ceremony’s co-artistic director.
“He’s a fun guy.”
Hawking, who speaks using a voice synthesiser, will deliver a series of messages about “the origins of the universe and how humanity has tried to understand how everything is ordered,” Hemming’s co-director Jenny Sealey said.
The ceremony, involving 3,000 performers, many of them with disabilities, brings the curtain up on the highest-profile Paralympic Games in the event’s 52-year history.
South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius, who made became the first double-amputee to run in the Olympics this month, will be among the biggest stars of the 11-day competition for disabled athletes.
There are an unprecedented 2.5 million tickets — which are expected to sell out for the first time — and the International Paralympic Committee predicts that more than four billion people will watch the Games on television.
Organizers believe much of the interest comes after a successful Olympics for British athletes, which saw the host nation finish third in the overall medal table behind the United States and China.
Britain is considered the “spiritual home” of the Paralympics, as the first recognized sports events for athletes with disabilities was held in the southern English village of Stoke Mandeville in 1948.
As the flame was lit in the village on Tuesday, London 2012 chief Sebastian Coe said the Paralympics owed a huge debt to Ludwig Guttmann, the German-Jewish neurologist at Stoke Mandeville hospital who set up the first wheelchair sports tournament there.
“It was that work, that drive and that passion, that created a games that are now the second-largest sporting event in the world,” Coe said of Guttmann, who died in 1980.
Shooting is set to provide the first gold of the Games today in the women’s 10m standing air rifle.
Medals are also up for grabs in the velodrome with the finals of the men and women’s individual pursuit, in four weight categories in judo at the ExCel Arena and at the Aquatics Center, where 15 swimming finals are to be held.
The showpiece athletics program gets under way tomorrow with the spotlight on Pistorius, who is seeking to defend his 100m, 200m and 400m titles from Beijing four years ago.
But Pistorius, dubbed the “Blade Runner” because he runs on carbon fiber blades, has played down expectations of repeating the treble, with world-record holder Jonnie Peacock and world champion Jerome Singleton likely to feature in the 100m final.
“It’s important to note that I haven’t run a 100m personal best in five years,” Pistorius told a press conference, adding that he would “be happy” with a medal of any color in the blue riband sprint.