How many Paralympians can you name?
One aim of London 2012 was to make more Paralympians household names. Has it worked? Channel 4 News takes to the Olympic Park in a highly unscientific experiment.
In August 2011 the British Paralympic Association (BPA) told Channel 4 News one of the aims of London 2012 was to put more Paralympic athletes “on the map”.
As the Games come to a close has it succeeded?
In terms of tickets London 2012 has been the best supported Paralympics selling around 900,000 more tickets than Beijing.
You can now start to list off people who have been heard of in Paralympic sport. BPA Chief Executive, Tim Hollingsworth
In the UK there has been more media coverage than ever: 6.3 million people watched Channel 4 as Jonnie Peacock stormed to gold against Oscar Pistorius in the T44 100m on Thursday evening.
The BPA’s Chief Executive Tim Hollingsworth told Channel 4 News he is “delighted” about the number of Paralympians who are household names.
“You can now start to list off people who have been heard of in Paralympic sport which before London wasn’t so much the case. It’s important because that’s where the inspiration flows from.”
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said it had spent the last two years building up a “ones to watch list”.
“These are the top athletes and teams we thought the world should watch and would become household names by the end of the Games. Many of them have, such as Jonnie Peacock, Tatyana McFadden, Matt Cowdrey, Canada’s wheelchair basketball team and Jiri Jezek,” a spokesman said.
In a highly unscientific experiment Channel 4 News took to the Olympic Park to find out how many Paralympians spectators could name in 12 seconds (see video above). Could you do any better? No internet research allowed!
