Day one of the Paralympics has been a great day for Australia, as predicted our Paralympians are likely to surpass their Olympic counterparts in 2012. Australia won gold in the very first medal event, courtesy of Victorian shooter Natalie Smith.
Australia will do well at these games as will the USA and Team GB, but as was mentioned during the excellent opening ceremony as the athletes from the poorer nations around the world wheeled their way into the Olympic Stadium, the task for the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) in the next four years is to equip these nations with similar state of the art wheelchair technology and similar equipment.
The Paralympics may embody the true spirit of the Olympic games but while London has shown that they have come a very long way since their inception in as the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948, and alongside the Olympics for the first time in 1960, unless an even playing field is created in the next four years in terms of equipment the reputation of the games could easily be damaged.
It is like making tennis players from the poorer nations compete against the first world nations with wooden racquets!
Fingers crossed that like Rugby Union, the IPC realize that for the good of the games they must invest in the lesser nations; it will serve everyone so much better in the long term.
