The London Paralympics are just 16 days away.

After two weeks of intense sporting action the circus wound up for another four years this morning, but don’t fret because the Paralympics are a short 16 days away.

While the media coverage in most countries isn’t the same and the athletes aren’t as well known, there are a million reasons to be excited for the Paralympics, yet as listing them all would result in a long post, I’ll just give you a few::

• We’re going to have more success than we did at the Olympics. Expect a top 10 and more than likely a top five finish from the team who finished fifth in Beijing with a 23 Gold-29 Silver-27 Bronze -79 total medal breakdown.
• The media coverage exists, but it won’t be the only thing we hear about for two weeks. With the Olympics on for 16 hours a day on Nine and Foxtel having eight exclusive channels, we didn’t see a lot else in the last two weeks. While that coverage would be great for the Paralympics, we aren’t in a position where that is going to happen for another few games, or realistically, ever. The ABC will cover both ceremonies live, while showing live events from 4am-8.30am and a one hour highlights package daily. I will write a post of the basics of the system in a few days time.
• The classification system means you get more of every individual sport. Many who don’t know disabled sport find the classification system confusing, heck many who do are still confused by it.
• Athletes who work equally as hard as their Olympic counterparts get the once in four year recognition they deserve. We saw it with the Olympics in the smaller sports. Who is going to follow sailing for the next four years just to track how our Olympic gold medallists are going ? It’s the same for any Paralympian, regardless of sport. This is the ten days they get treated like stars in what is otherwise a very low key life.
• It’s sport. This one speaks for itself. If you’d watch the Olympics and lose sleep for two weeks over things you usually wouldn’t care about then you better replicate it for the Paralympics. I’d love to say the glamour is the same, but what is the same is that you get competition and the best athletes slogging it out for what they’ve chased for years.

Personally ? I can’t wait to see people I shared some of the best years of my life doing what they do best.