Official website of the Paralympic Movement
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About us

© • IPC

The London 2012 Paralympic Games, are the biggest Paralympic Games ever. They took place between 29 August and 9 September 2012, featuring 4,237athletes from 164 countries, who competed in 20 sports.

The London 2012 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) vision was that rather than making them different from previous Paralympics, they wanted to take the best aspects of previous Games and bring them together.

Mandeville, who is named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital, the spiritual home of the Paralympic Movement, was the Paralympic mascot and has been actively involved in Get Set, London 2012’s education programme.

On 9 September 2010 tickets for the Paralympic Games went on sale. In the first three week ticket window more than 1 million tickets were sold, a record for the Paralympic Games.

The day before tickets went on sale London’s Trafalgar Square staged International Paralympic Day. More than 100 British and international athletes attended the 12 hour spectacular which involved demonstrations in 10 Paralympic sports.

In addition to sprints along a purpose-built 50m track in front of the National Gallery involving the USA duo of April Holmes and Jerome Singleton along with France’s Marie Amelie LeFur and South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius, British Prime Minister David Cameron challenged London Mayor Boris Johnson to a game of wheelchair tennis making worldwide media headlines.

Channel 4 was appointed as UK host broadcaster and in the lead-up to the Games screened a number of programmes designed to raise the profile on athletes and their sports. Channel 4's coverage reached 39.9 million people - over 69% of the UK population.

BBC Radio 5 was awarded the UK radio rights and broadcasted live commentary and analysis from the Games.

The IPC also appointed the Press Association as host national news agency to provide the most comprehensive coverage yet for events in the run up to London 2012 and the Paralympic Games themselves.

London 2012 also secured the biggest commercial deal ever for a Paralympic Games with UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. The company boasts 21.5 million customers each week all of whom were exposed to London 2012 Paralympic branding in the lead-up to, and during, the Games.

London was elected to be the host city for the 2012 Games on 6 July 2005, at the 117th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Singapore.

Following four rounds of voting by IOC members, London eventually triumphed by taking 54 votes from a possible 104. Other cities competing for the right to host the Games were Paris (France), New York (USA), Moscow (Russia) and Madrid (Spain).

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