The general feeling after the London Olympics was that the excitement was over. The Paralympics would, it was feared, be a damp squib after the games. In fact the Paralympics have attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. The media have given the competitions almost as much coverage as they did to the main sporting events of the Olympics. London has again shown that Britain is capable of organizing another spectacular show.
One reason for this enthusiasm may have been that those, who had been unable to get tickets for the Olympics, found that the process of buying tickets for the Paralympics was easier, quicker and less expensive.
Another was the imaginative opening ceremony. This featured Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge professor of physics, who is paralysed by motor neuron disease and whose voice has to be synthesized, speculating on the origins of the universe, followed by an attempt to replicate the Big Bang. The music and spectacle of the opening ceremony included an ex-soldier who had lost both his lower limbs flying down in the spotlight on a wire from a great height.