Fresh from the Paralympics

Goalball - Iran -v- Algeria

 

A kind friend got us a couple of tickets for a goalball match at the Paralympics this morning, so we parked the dogs at their local hotel yesterday afternoon and went up to London for the night in order to be at the Olympic Park bright-eyed and bushytailed this morning.

 

We had watched a fair amount of the Olympics on the television, but were not prepared for the sheer scale of the venue: the investment has been colossal.  The various locations for the events are in some cases a good twenty minutes' walk from each other, but when you bear in mind the size of the crowds that has to be accommodated the space is not too large.  The architecture of the buildings themselves is in some cases stunning - the main stadium is of course impressive because of its vast size, but the curves of the velodrome and the aquatic centre are beautiful.



 

We landed up at the goalball in the so-called "Copper Box", which is much as the name suggests.  Goalball is a game in which two teams of three players face each other across a hard-surfaced pitch, at each end of which is a goal spanning the whole width.  The players are either wholly or partially blind, and to ensure they have no vision they wear tight-fitting eyemasks.  The aim of the game is to throw the ball into the opposing goal.  The defending team are obviously unable to see the ball so have to judge where it is by hearing it.  (We had been told the ball had bells in it, but we couldn't hear any.)  They block the ball by lying full-length in front of the goal.  The ability of the players to orientate themselves was little short of astonishing.

 

We then caught some wheelchair tennis, which was also astonishing.  Serves were being delivered with a speed of 120 mph, and the players' ability to manoeuvre their chairs at speed was remarkable.

 

Much is being spoken of the legacy of the Paralympics in the form of a change in social attitudes to the disabled.  It's tricky, I find, to get the right balance between acknowledging special needs and treating the disabled as no different from anyone else.  But the achievements of disabled athletes in the Paralympics can only be positive.

 

Antony Mair