OPENING CEREMONY

 

The start of the Paralympics and the opening ceremony was last night…. London Paralympics

 

The fact that it started in Stoke Mandeville in London must give a feeling of pride from people from the UK.

 

 

At the start we have got John Snow a newsreader who I think will find this a new experience and he might struggle, Jonathan Edwards who did the athletics events at the Olympics and Ade Adepatan who has proved himself on That Paralympics Show. Also Claire Balding who worked for the BBC sport team chatting to a lot of people involved in the opening ceremony Claire will shine.  Alex Booker whom is  a new recruit talked to the Prime Minister in a way that made people with disabilities feel strong and to see them in a completely different way I have not seen Alex before but I think he will do ok.

We also saw a new reporter talk to blind runners and hearing what they have to say.. You can not help but be inspired and take that into your own life. We then saw Boris Johnson say how attitudes had changed in the last 20 years and how he also enjoyed wheelchair basketball. Martine Wright sat beside a suicide bomber on a train and all she saw was blackness, no pain, another person came down to help her and saved her life. She decided to join the sitting volleyball team and qualified for team GB but the boards didn’t allow the team to qualify until March 2012.

 

 

The stadium was packed to see Steven Hawking who started with a big bang which fire was going into the middle centre of the stage. Next there was a special tribute to Rhianna song ‘umbrella’ which I felt they could have done more with possibly using lights or angles.   Next there was the opening of a big book using angles to show as much of it as possible. Everyone then wore glitter things and sang a song about people’s rights which I think needs to be understood on certain places and about people as a whole. The Queen then came out then the Army Navy and RAF brought out the Union Jack. They then played the national anthem of GB.

Next the countries came in and I found this a bit boring as it moved along very slowly. There were some interesting facts talked about on commentary like the 45 year old javelin thrower and the amount of nations not giving their Paralympians money over the athletes walking past. Team GB came out to confetti. There were lights in the crowd which I thought were nice. A classical singer entered and sang a song about the countries of the world I wasn’t that pushed on her but the song was good the other woman just confused me.

Seb Coe and Sir Phillip Grevan came out and made speeches Seb can pull out a speech. Sir Phippip Grevan seems to be vey proud as the head of the Paralympics Then the queen opened the Paralympics and there were fireworks. The flag came in through the GB wheelchair basketball under 22 team. It looked very good with the cone shapes coming out from the centre. The armed services put it on the pole. The Paralympic anthem came next which I thought was quite nice. Liz Johnson Richard Alcott and David Hunter took the Paralympic oath. There was a special thing to do with knowledge and books.

Later Steven Hawking  made a beautiful speech about respect. Then Joe Townsend a man with no legs went up into the sky and hands the flame over to Margret Maurn a member of the GB 1948 Parolympic games. At the end someone sang ‘I am who I am’ and was just beautiful and the fireworks finished it off.

In conclusion like most things like this there were things I liked and things I did not but I thought that it was a quality Paralympics Opening.