London 2012 blog

For some forty years after the war, Bonn was the German Capital - or to be precise the capital of West Germany - bustling with Government Ministries, diplomats and convoys of stretched Mercedes limousines.

When the Berlin wall fell Bonn lost many of its Governmental tenants. It was lucky that one of the young organisations looking for a home shortly afterwards was the International Paralympic Committee. It is now housed in two specially adapted and accessible chateaux near the city centre.

The International Paralympic Committee may be younger and more modest in scale that its older brothers at the International Olympic Committee based in Lausanne, Switzerland, but it more than makes up for it in energy, passion and welcome.

As part of a London 2012 delegation including our Chief Executive and a number of my fellow Directors last week, I was surprised to discover that very few Games Organising Committees have made such trips to the IPC, and none as relatively early in their planning as we currently are.

We were reminded that the Paralympic movement was born in Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire just after the second world war. Pioneering work by Ludwig Guttman used sport in a ground breaking way for those being rehabilitated after war injuries. It now offers the London Games a special opportunity to take the movement on to a new level.

We saw ample evidence of how the Paralympic movement has helped to shift attitudes to disability across large areas of the world and to educate, inspire and excite growing audiences. But if there is a powerful social motivation to the movement, don't be deceived.

This is about serious elite sport - sport at the highest and most competitive level. In London in 2012, as in Beijing next year, the Paralympic Games will offer a global celebration of some truly astonishing athletes - their performances will excite us, and their stories will inspire us.

The London 2012 team learnt plenty and we look forward to more inspirational visits to our IPC friends in Bonn.