After the last Olympic and Para Olympic Games full of breathtaking feats of athleticism, and superhuman performances in both events we came back to earth with a bang.
In a post I wrote at the time I calculated that it took exactly seven hours before the news channels brought us down to earth with a bump with threats of mass industrial action and further financial gloom.
So what difference does the Olympic Games make to me?
Not a great deal really apart from one glorious Saturday afternoon / evening watching Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah strut there stuff with three hundred other out of shape middle aged men with pints in there hands cheering with all there hearts and tears down there cheeks. A wonderful moment to savor.
The Para Olympics on the other hand has had a profound effect. At the start of the event I felt uncomfortable watching these athletes with limbs missing and severe disabilities doing superhuman things. Things I wouldn’t even attempt with this crumbling body which isn’t in to bad a shape.
What it did, it put these people in the spotlight, gave them a stage and made it acceptable to look at someone with a less than perfect body and not feel uneasy.
I have changed, I have started to look past the disabilities and look at the individuals, heroes one and all. Not because of the superhuman effort that these feats must have taken but the fact that they show me that the human spirit can overcome almost anything.
I only hope that just like the news it doesn’t take me seven hours to forget the lesson I have learned.
Channel 4 have produced a trailer for the Para Olympic Games that started screening yesterday, it is the most breathtakingly brilliant trailer I have even seen and it seems that 1.7million other people think the same.
The one thing that this trailer has given me is a new mantra ‘Yes I Can’! Just think what that simple statement says about intention, it makes all the difference in the world believe me.
John d eccles 