Games with real spirit

Their delight was obvious to everyone watching, many of them dancing to the music, waving their flags, beaming with pleasure and one doing handstands down the 100m course. They take their sport seriously but they also know how to have a good time and have not reached the stage where they take an occasion of this magnitude for granted.

The atmosphere was, in many ways, richer than for the Olympic Opening Ceremony with a freshness that comes from individuals who are doing what they do because they love to do it, not because they are paid to.

This has the spirit of the amateur running through it with the application of the professional. Half a century ago, fears that wheelchair athletes might do themselves damage meant that the races were restricted to no longer than 50m or 100m. Now they compete in marathons.

The categories are constantly being expanded to include ever more willing participants. Athletes with learning disabilities first took part four years ago in Atlanta and are here in force, while sailing and rugby are among the sports to be added to the list this time around.

Chris Holmes, who is competing at his fourth Paralympic Games, said he has never known facilities that even get close to those he has encountered here.

"The swimming pool is just incredible," he said. "I can't wait to start racing in it and I am sure that world records will be broken there as they were for the Olympics.

"This is the biggest Paralympics yet and I feel sure that it will be the best."

Holmes has won nine gold medals at the past two Games and will swim in four different events for the visually impaired: the 50, 100 and 400m freestyle as well as the 200m individual medley.

He is an outstanding athlete in a team of high achievers.

Danny Crates and Lloyd Upsdell, who are both competing in their first Paralympics, are two of the exciting young talents on the track. Crates has the benefit of a training partner who can share the Games experience - he trains alongside 400m runner Donna Fraser and is constantly having bets with her as to who will run faster.

"I bet her that I would break 50 seconds before her," he said. "But I lost that one when she did it at the Olympics. I hope that I can follow her example and I'll be happy to buy her dinner."

That will be an easier forfeit to pay than the bet that required him to run in front of Fraser, Daley Thompson and a host of other athletic celebrities wearing a pair of women's Lycra briefs and a crop top. Crates is still trying to live it down.

With a fastest 400m time of 50.43secs, he holds his own in able-bodied competition and never stops to think how fast he might be able to run had he not lost his right arm in a car accident.

Upsdell is a teenager brimming with the confidence of one who became double world champion at the age of 15. Now 17, this could be the start of a long Paralympic career. He will run in the 100m and 200m, having set a new world record in the latter event for his cerebral palsy class at the Southern Cross Championships here in Sydney last October.

He talks as if defeat is out of the question. "I've set the fastest times, so unless something goes badly wrong, I should win," he told me.

It is that sort of plain talking and raw self-belief that sets these individuals apart. As a group they form a winning team and put their Olympic counterparts in the shade in Atlanta, more than making up for the dismal haul of one gold medal from Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent.

The Great Britain Paralympic team finished fourth in the medal table four years ago with 122 medals, 39 of them gold. Given the constant improvement in standards, it will be very difficult to equal that achievement, let alone better it, but these are people who are used to surpassing expectations.

In all, 214 individuals are here to compete and all of them intend to achieve personal bests. More than that you cannot ask and for many of them, that will mean they win a medal.

The Paralympic movement has come a long way since Dr Ludwig Guttmann decided to use sport as a way of rehabilitating Second World War veterans suffering from spinal injuries.

In 1948, he used the grounds of Stoke Mandeville Hospital for a competition between sports clubs and other hospitals. It neatly coincided with the Olympic Games being held in London and so the Paralympics were born - 'para' referring to parallel rather than paralysed or paraplegic.

Guttmann would never have imagined that 52 years later, 4000 athletes from 125 countries would be assembled on the other side of the world, ready to run faster, jump higher, throw further and swim quicker than ever before.

The determination and spirit of these athletes is an inspiration to all but it would be a mistake to think of them as 'disabled' - they certainly do not think of themselves in that way.

Far too often the adjectives 'brave' and 'courageous' are thrown in front of their names for no reason other than to assuage the guilt of an able-bodied person who cannot conceive of how they would cope in a similar situation.

The answer is, you cope. Look around you and you will see people coping in all walks of life. What is different about these individuals is that they excel at sport and that is what they are here to prove.

It is up to all of us to appreciate their sporting achievements and not merely focus on the reason that they are qualified to compete here.

Upsdell told me he would win at least one gold medal and I believe him. Crates is setting out to break 50secs and with a fair wind and a packed stadium, he might just do it. Holmes may not match Ian Thorpe for shoe size but he'll try to do so for gold medal collection.

Support them, admire them and cheer them on, but please don't pity them. It's the last thing they want.