London 2012 blog

Following what was reported as a very successful PanAmerican Games in Rio the first ParaPanAmerican Games is being held (12-19 August) using the same facilities and Village.

All 24 countries of the Americas region of International Paralympic Committee are present. On Saturday 11 August I presented our London 2012 Paralympic progress report to the General Assembly of the region.



The Opening Ceremony took place on Sunday inside the 15000 seater Basketball arena rather than the Maracana stadium with its 120,000 plus seats - a good decision. On Monday the competition started in earnest and I visited Athletics, Wheelchair Basketball, Powerlifting and Swimming where I presented medals.

The Powerlifting was held in Pavilion 3 at Riocentro - a huge complex similar to Birmingham's Exhibition Centre. Monday evening I spent time with the Chicago 2016 delegation which reminded me of our own position four years ago - tempus fugit!



Having completed my Paralympic duties I then spent the next two days before returning home diving into the Village. The setting for the Village is stunning. The developer had to build 1400 units to accommodate about 4000 residents for the Pan-American Games.


Although the bathroom to resident proportion was excellent 1:3 in most cases they were very small en-suites which meant they were unsuitable for the Para Pan-American Games. The developer therefore converted 300 units with full accessibility prior to the Games - in each case the kitchen was converted to a fully accessible bathroom and two additional bedroom doors were installed to take wheelchair users. For the Para PanAms this meant that these units had 3 bathrooms and a proportion of 1 bathroom per 2 athletes!

The Para PanAm athletes were delighted with the Village - each set of units had its own pool, airco, water purification unit and well thought through dining, transport and international area arrangements.

Guadalajara, Mexico has already been announced as the next PanAm and ParaPan Games hosts in 2011 which means that the Paralympic movement takes another growth step in the world. Congratulations to Brazil for setting a new benchmark.

Even so my final point has to be on the Village. A year ago the developer announced that the units would go on sale on a particular day - they all sold in 24 hours!