London 2012

USA's Richard Browne competes in the high jump on the final day of the London 2012 athletics competition. © Getty Images © Lieven Coudenys

In his closing speech IPC President Sir Philip Craven described London 2012 as "the greatest Paralympic Games ever" and with record crowds, numbers of broadcasters and athletes and countries taking part combined with record breaking performances from athletes and unprecedented media coverage it was easy to see why.

The Games had a significant impact on British society. Research ahead of the Closing Ceremony found:

• 1 in 3 UK adults changed their attitude towards people with an impairment;

• 65% agree the Paralympics delivered a breakthrough in the way people with an impairment are viewed in the country – up from a 40% expectation in June 2010;

• eight out of ten (81%) British adults thought the Paralympics had a positive impact on the way people with an impairment are viewed by the public;

• the Paralympic Games is about ability, not disability – and are about what people can do, not what they can’t do.

Click here to view a highlights video of London 2012's "Best Games Ever."

London 2012 guides and policies can be found here.

London 2012 Qualification Criteria

SPORTS

The Games featured 20 sports, most of which took place in London with the exception of Sailing at Weymouth and Portland, Rowing at Eton Dorney and Road Cycling which was staged at Brands Hatch.

Click here to find out the Top 50 Moments in Paralympic Sport of 2012.

Archery Para athletics Boccia Cycling Equestrian Football 5-a-side Football 7-a-side Goalball Judo Para powerlifting Rowing Sailing Shooting Para sport Para swimming Table tennis Sitting volleyball Wheelchair basketball Wheelchair fencing Wheelchair rugby Wheelchair tennis

TORCH RELAY

IPC President Sir Philip Craven was among the first five Torchbearers to carry the London 2012 Paralympic Flame after it was created at an emotional ceremony at Stoke Mandeville Stadium.

He was joined by four other legends of the Paralympics – Baroness Susan Masham of Ilton, Caz Walton, Sally Haynes and Jane Blackburn – after the four national flames were joined at the birthplace of the Paralympic Movement.

The Paralympic Flame then left on a 92-mile journey to the Olympic Stadium in a 24-hour torch relay that involved 580 Torchbearers working in teams of five.

Prior to the Stoke Mandeville event, National Flames were created at the summit of the highest peaks of the four home nations: Scafell Pike (England), Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa (Wales), Ben Nevis (Scotland) and Slieve Donard (Northern Ireland).

The four individual Flames were then placed in a miner's lantern and transferred to the nation's capital cities. Paralympic celebrations took place in London, Belfast Edinburgh and Cardiff.

Find out more about the London 2012 Torch Relay here.

OPENING CEREMONY

The London 2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony was an unforgettable event with leading scientist Professor Stephen Hawking and renowned actor Sir Ian McKellen making an appearance.

The Ceremony took the form of a play, with Hawking introducing proceedings before Sir Ian took over, taking the role of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and guiding the principle character Miranda through the evening’s proceedings.

All of the athletes received a huge ovation when they entered an Olympic Stadium drenched in colour, before gathering in the centre to play their part in the remainder of the ceremony.

The Games were officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, before Royal Marine Joe Townsend brought the Paralympic Flame into the stadium.

Great Britain 5-a-side footballer David Clarke carried the Flame on, before the country’s first ever Paralympic gold medalist Margaret Maughan lit the Paralympic Cauldron.

MEDALS

For the third consecuitve Games China topped the medals table winning 231 in total. This was 20 more than they won on homesoil in 2008 underlining their position as the Paralympic superpower.

After finishing eighth in 2008, Russia showed the greatest imporvement climbing to second overall with 36 gold medals. Host nation Great Britain, who won 18 more medals than in Beijing, finished third whilst Ukraine and Australia finished fourth and fifth for the second consecutive Games.

In total 75 of the 164 competing countries won at least one medal.

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCES

Swimmers were the athletes to take home the most medals from London 2012 with Australia's Jacqueline Freney (8 golds) and Brazil's Daniel Dias (6 golds) leading the way.

On the track Great Britain's David Weir and USA's Martin Raymond were in unbeatable form. Bouyed on by a vocal home crowd Weir took T54 gold in the 800m, 1,500m, 5,000m and marathon whereas 18 year old Raymond, who was making his Games debut, took T52 gold in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m.

In wheelchair tennis, Dutch sensation Esther Vergeer was reduced to tears winning her fourth Paralympic gold and 470th consecutive match.

There were also some big upsets in the Games. Brazil's Alan Oliveira beat South Africa's Oscar Pistorius to 200m T44 gold and Canada halted USA's hopes of a fourth wheelchair rugby gold in five Games with a semi-final defeat. Australia eventually picked up the gold.

ATTENDANCE AND COVERAGE

A record 2.7 million tickets were sold for the Games with most events and sessions selling out.

The Games were broadcast to over 100 countries and territories, the most ever. In the UK rights holder Channel 4 screened over 150 hours of live coverage, achieving record audiences. More than 11.2 million watched the Opening Ceremony - the channel's biggest audience of a decade - and most days the channel enjoyed the biggest audience share of all the main UK channels. Channel 4's coverage reached 39.9 million people - over 69% of the UK population.

London 2012 was the first truly social and online Games. Throughout the course of the Games there were 1.3 million tweets mentioning 'Paralympic', 25 million people visited London 2012.com and over 5.8 million people upgraded to the London 2012 Paralympic App.

The IPC also saw huge visitor numbers to its online channels. Nearly 2 million people visited www.paralympic.org - which broadcast over 780 hours of live action - and there were more than 5.1 million downloads of videos on demand during the Games from the official IPC YouTube channel www.youtube.com/paralympicsporttv. A full schedule of the daily live streams can be found here.

The IPC's Facebook following increased by 350% and there were 82.1 million views of its pages. Twitter followers grew by 50%.

Samsung Bloggers, an innovative collaboration between the IPC, LOCOG and Samsung whereby many of the world's top athletes provided behind the scenes video blogs, also proved extremely popular. Over 600 video blogs were uploaded and were viewed by over 300,000 people.

CLOSING CEREMONY

The London 2012 Paralympics Closing Ceremony was a spectacular affair with Coldplay, Jay-Z and Rihanna playing to a capacity crowd.

His Royal Highness Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex was present to witness a spectacular show that illustrated the four seasons.

Paralympians Michael McKillop of Ireland, and Kenya’s Mary Nakhumicha Zakayo were given the Whang Youn Dai award for those exemplifying the spirit of the Games.

Speeches by Sir Philip and Sebastian Coe, Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, were followed by The Final Flame – a section to mark the closing of the Paralympic Games and the last night of London 2012.

The ceremony ended with a spectacular firework display over the Olympic Stadium and Park, providing a fitting finale to an entirely unforgettable London 2012.