Lights go out on 'greatest ever Games'

London bid farewell to the Paralympics, with a spectacular celebration of the human spirit, amid claims the Games had led to a "seismic" shift in attitudes towards disability.

Coldplay, Rihanna and Jay-Z headlined a three-hour festival of song and dance in front of 80,000 spectators at the Olympic Stadium, with flame-throwers, fantastical vehicles, roller-skating warriors and stunning aerial acrobatics.

Pistorius retains 400m title with style

"Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius on Saturday brought the Paralympic track and field programme to a close in style, winning his favoured event by a huge margin.

Victory for the 25-year-old South African never looked in any doubt from the gun, as he struck out on his own to lead coming into the last half-lap and was roared across the line by the packed 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium in 46.68sec.

London to bid Paralympic Games farewell

The Paralympic flame will be extinguished in London on Sunday after the final day of competition at the Games, bringing down the curtain on a summer of elite sport in the British capital.

The world's best wheelchair, amputee, blind and visually impaired marathon racers compete in central London from 0700 GMT, taking the festival of disabled sport to the public, with large crowds expected.

London 2012 Paralympics inspiring moments in sports

Classifying disability

Due to the Paralympics' classification rules, South Africa's double amputee "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius can line up against runners with only one prosthetic leg.

Defying the odds

Chinese swimmer Zheng Tao has no arms, but that didn't stop him winning gold against competitors more physically abled.

Paralympics 2012: The inspiring women fighting for gold

Tatyana McFadden

Country: United States
Event: Athletics

McFadden, 23, an eight-time world champion and Paralympics multi-medal winner,

She was born with spina bifida, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. She spent the first six years of her life in a St Petersburg orphanage -- where she walked her hands because she didn't have a wheelchair -- before being adopted a visiting American.

From disaster to triumph: A week in the life of Mallory Weggemann

U.S. swimmer Mallory Weggemann was paralyzed from the waist down in 2008 after a routine epidural injection went wrong. She returned to the pool and became a world champion, setting 15 records. Now 23, she had been targeting nine gold medals at London 2012 but her events were reduced after her classification was altered by the International Paralympic Committee. She writes for CNN about her journey to London 2012.

London, England (CNN) -- When I think back on this past week and the rollercoaster of emotions I have experienced at the Paralympics, I realize that everything happens for a reason.

Hours before the London 2012 opening ceremonies I learned that my appeal to overturn my reclassification had been denied. In that moment I felt defeat.

I felt as though everything I had worked for the past four and a half years had been stripped from me, but it was then that I realized that the journey to get to this point wasn't about the medals.

The reason why I got back in the water in April 2008 nearly four months after being paralyzed, the reason that I devoted my life to swimming for the past four years, the sacrifices I made, and the person I became, wasn't about the medals.

I think it was easy for me to get lost in the numbers -- the number of how many golds I could win -- but when this happened it forced me to reflect on my journey and what got me to this point. I realized I did all of that to become the best possible swimmer, athlete and person I could be for this very moment, medals or no medals.

Source: CNN.Com

100m showdown: Team USA guns for Oscar Pistorius

Team USA sprinters Jerome Singleton and Blake Leeper will take on South African Oscar Pistorius in the 100-meter final at the Paralympics on Thursday. "I feel like I was meant for this moment," Leeper told NBC News. "Oscar, you'd better be ready because me and my teammates are coming for you."

Packed crowds and controversy at the Games

Packed crowds on Friday greeted the first day of athletics at the Paralympics but the jubilant mood was overshadowed by a mix-up that saw the wrong athlete awarded a gold.

There was controversy, too, at the Velodrome, where the British favourite in the men's C4/5 1km time-trial angrily protested a decision not to allow him to restart after slipping at the start.

The day had started off well, with nearly 80,000 people packed into the Olympic Stadium in east London roaring T54 wheelchair racers around the track in the women's 5,000m heats to the astonishment of athletes.

There were few spare seats for the evening session, which notably saw Ireland's Jason Smyth -- who trains with US sprint star Tyson Gay -- lower the men's T13 100m world record to 10.54secs in qualifying.

The woman who set the first world record at the venue during a test event back in May, British wheelchair racer Hannah Cockcroft, also gave home fans reason to cheer by clinching the women's T34 100m crown.

Athletes paid tribute to the support, which London 2012 chief Sebastian Coe said was a "very powerful and eloquent statement about the status of the sport", showing they had recaptured the atmosphere of the Olympics earlier this month.

  Denmark's Jackie Christiansen, who won gold in the men's F42/44 shot with a throw of 18.16m, said: "It was really exciting out there. It was surely the biggest crowd I've seen in my lifetime.

"And the crowd were great. They were with us all the way."

There was an inspirational performance in the pool, with former US Navy lieutenant Bradley Snyder winning gold in the men's S11 100m freestyle, nearly a year after he was blinded by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.

He said it showed what was possible for anyone affected by life-changing injuries.

"Hopefully, my presence here, representing the flag in a different manner, can provide some inspiration to those guys so they can get out," he told reporters.

"It doesn't have to be sport but just get out of bed, get back into life and get through the barriers that have been presented to them."

Former British Royal Air Force weapons specialist Jon-Allen Butterworth, who lost an arm in a rocket attack in Iraq in 2007, earlier won silver in the men's C4/5 1km time-trial.

There was no medal, though, for Britain's Derek Derenalagi, who in 2007 was officially pronounced dead and put in a body bag after being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan, until medics found a pulse.

He failed to make the final of the men's F57/58 discus but was given a hero's welcome by the crowd.

Martine Wright, who lost both legs during the Islamist suicide bombings on London's public transport network on July 7, 2005, also made an emotional debut in the Paralympics, as Britain took their Games bow in sitting volleyball.

Seven years ago, Wright was on her way to work and reading about London's successful bid to host the Olympics and Paralympics announced the day before when the bombs went off, has become one of the inspirational stories of the Games.

 "It was absolutely amazing," she told AFP after the match. "I've been on quite a journey the last few years.

"To be able to finally get on court in front of my friends and family that have supported me and been so important to me over the last few years was an absolute dream come true -- and a dream that I never actually would have had before July 7."

The mood was soured, however, after organisers admitted that "inaccurate results data" meant the first field event gold medallist -- Mariia Pomazan of Ukraine -- was wrongly awarded the F35/36 discus title.

The result was amended and saw Pomazan relegated to silver, swapping places with China's Wu Qing, while Wu's compatriot Bao Jiongyu was relegated to fourth. Her bronze was taken by Australia's Katherine Proudfoot.

In the Velodrome, Britain's Jody Cundy, the favourite in the C4/5 1km time-trial, was left angry and distraught after slipping out of the starting gate and being denied a restart by officials.

He was led away from the track shouting and swearing after throwing a water bottle, as British team officials lodged a protest. But world governing body the International Cycling Union (UCI) held firm, blaming the slip on "rider error".

Source: MSN.Com

First day of Paralympic competition begins

Eleven days of top-class sport for athletes with disabilities got under way on Thursday on the first full day of the London Paralympics, with 28 gold medals up for grabs, among them cycling and swimming.

After the Games started with a spectacular opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in east London featuring British scientist Stephen Hawking, the action began at the Velodrome and the Aquatics Centre.

Five cycling medals were to be contested in the men's and women's individual pursuit, while there were 15 finals in the pool after a day of swimming heats.

Judo and powerlifting also had finals but shooting is set to provide the first gold, with Britain's Di Coates -- aiming for her fourth Paralympic gold in eight Games -- favourite in the women's 10m standing air rifle.

The day's programme also includes heats in archery, equestrian, goalball, table tennis, sitting volleyball and wheelchair basketball.

Source: MSN.Com

Paralympic flame lit at 'spiritual home'

The Paralympic flame was lit at the spiritual home of disabled sport on Tuesday, signalling the 24-hour countdown to the start of this year's Games.

Some 3,000 people, including former Paralympians and dignitaries such as London 2012 organising committee chief Sebastian Coe, watched as the flame took hold at 8.12 pm (1912GMT) at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in southern England.

It was at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1948 that a German-Jewish neurologist, Ludwig Guttmann, organised the first recognised sports events for people with disabilities, 12 years before the inaugural Paralympics in Rome.

"It is simply not possible to stand here and not recognise the momentous debt of gratitude to him, his work, his drive and passion," Coe said of Guttmann, who died in 1980.

"I really hope that if he was standing here today he would be very proud to be able to look on the eve of the Paralympic Games that it was that work, that drive and that passion that created a games that are now the second-largest sporting event in the world."

The president of the International Paralympic Committee, Philip Craven, said simply: "It all started here."

This year's Paralympic flame was created from four 'national flames' of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that were kindled on Britain's highest peaks and brought to Stoke Mandeville in miner's lamps.

The flames, transferred into four torches, were then placed simultaneously in a cauldron, creating a single flame that will be taken 92 miles (148 kilometres) overnight from the world-famous spinal injuries centre to the British capital.

A total of 116 teams of five people will now carry the flame to the Olympic Stadium in east London for Wednesday evening's opening ceremony.

Guttmann's daughter, Eva Loeffler, said the Paralympics had developed beyond anyone's expectations from modest roots with just 16 wheelchair athletes -- all of them war veterans with spinal injuries -- in 1948.

"Everyone here could not have dreamed that lighting a spark in the hearts, minds and bodies of Paralympians would grow into the amazing spectacle we are about to witness," the 79-year-old told the crowd.

"It's so right and fitting that Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympics, has been chosen as the starting line for the Paralympic torch relay for London 2012...

"We have hope that the power of the Paralympic Games and the incredible Paralympic athletes will inspire a generation of newly-disabled people to transform their lives through the power of sport."

The original Stoke Mandeville games were timed to coincide with the first post-war Olympics in London the same year and became so popular they were repeated annually.

The first international event was held in 1952, when a team of Dutch veterans came to compete.

Guttmann, who fled Nazi Germany with his family, managed to convince organisers of the 1960 Rome Olympics to allow 400 wheelchair athletes from 23 countries to compete in a 'parallel' event and the Paralympics were born.

This year, a record 4,200 athletes from 166 countries, including reclusive North Korea, will participate in 20 sports, with the 11-day event an unprecedented near sell-out.

Guttmann's daughter said her father would have been proud of how disabled sport had developed, particularly with the London Olympics seeing its first double-amputee competitor in South Africa's Oscar Pistorius.

Pistorius -- dubbed the "Blade Runner" because he runs on carbon fibre prosthetic limbs -- made the semi-final of the men's 400m and the final of the 4x400m relay, and is set to defend his Paralympic T44 100m, 200m and 400m titles.

Source: MSN.Com