New security challenges for Paralympic torch relay

They are back in training after a three week lay off from the gruelling torch marathon around the UK.

But for the Paralympics they will be up mountains, through cities and on a relay in the dead of night to guard the flame.

I went to watch them training again round an athletics track at the Metropolitan police training school in north west London.

Sergeant Joanne Lewis expressed the hope that it is the same as for the Olympics: “I hope everyone is as enthusiastic as they have been. It’s humbling it’s amazing, it’s inspiring. You run out of words to describe it.”

Like for the Olympics there will be five teams of seven officers. Each team will be allocated to a group of scouts scaling the four highest peaks in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Flames will be lit on Scafell Pike, Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Slieve Donard on 22 August by striking flint against steel.

They will then be taken to London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast before uniting in Stoke Mandeville, the home of the Paralympic movement, where they will join to light one torch which will be carried by 122 teams of five torchbearers in a 24-hour relay to the opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium on 29 August.

Each torch bearing team will have at least one less abled person.

None of the officers I spoke to has any clear idea about the size of crowds

Different challenges

Up to 12 million are estimated to have turned out for the Olympic torch – and that was during daylight hours.

Instead of one torchbearer, there will be a line of five who will pass the torch between them before handing it on to the next team.

Chief Inspector Graham Dean said: “We will need more space…”

“A group of five stretched across the road with the security runners will take up a sizeable chunk of road that we didn’t have before. That will be our hardest concern. The pace won’t change much.

“Security will be dealt with exactly the same. The threat level is still the same.”