Fans of the Paralympics rejoiced when YouTube made its 11th hour announcement that a special channel would broadcast 500 hours of live events from the London games. With NBC planning to air recap programs only, it was a boon to people in the United States and Canada who wanted to watch world-class athletes with disabilities from 165 countries joined in competition.
Where would the blogosphere be without YouTube? If pictures are worth a thousand words, then short, embeddable clips are beyond priceless. This clip of David Wetherill’s scintillating table tennis shot (and appropriately enthusiastic commentary by Farrel Anthony) was probably referenced or reposted by bloggers more than any other:
Of course, there’s plenty of video to be found of the Paralympics’ most well-known athlete, South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius. The “Blade Runner” set a new world record in the 200m-T44 qualifying heat with this start to finish domination; but his loss to Brazil’s Alan Oliveira in the Finals has been watched way more times in online replays because of the controversy about blade length following the race.
Still, I think blogger Jason Kottke pinpointed the most exciting race of the games in his blog, which featured 36-year-old Richard Whitehead from host country of Great Britain, whose charge through the middle of the pack won gold and set the world record in the 200m-T42 category:
Owen Gibson’s article about Whitehead’s race for The Guardian captures all the drama and the emotion of the event. The double-amputee was barred from competing in his preferred event, the marathon, because the Paralympics have no category for leg prostheses in that event. Gibson rightly puts the victory on par with England’s heroes from the Olympic games held earlier in the year, validating Whitehead’s stated goal:
Loudly acclaimed by the 65,000 crowd inside the Olympic Stadium and no doubt those watching on television, his victory will go down alongside those of Mo Farah, Sir Chris Hoy and the rest in the annals of a remarkable British sporting summer. After the race, he said that he had aimed to show that Olympic and Paralympic athletes were on ‘the same level’. If the roar and chanting of the crowd, the reaction on social networks and the level of interest in his remarkable victory were any guide, he can consider it mission accomplished.
Despite some of the turmoil outside the games, it was a good Paralympics for the host country. Swimmer Ellie Simmonds won multiple golds; and although swimming never held much allure to me as a spectator sport, the last lap of her world record time in the 400m Freestyle is terrific drama; and the way she slaps the wall upon winning and then smiles through triumphant tears is exactly why many non-sports fans tune into the Olympics and Paralympics alike.
The United States athletes did pretty well for themselves, too. Joe Berenyi, Kelley Becherer, Mallory Weggeman, and Raymond Martin were a few of the individual gold medalists. Tatyana McFadden, who we profiled earlier this week, also earned her first Paralympic gold after three tries, so we’ll give her the final word of our Paralympics coverage:
Share links to your favorite Paralympics highlights in the Comments section below.
Image by Ian Patterson.