Paralympics: British Team Look on Track for More Gold

If you were looking for a city that was impeccably correct in its attitude towards people with disabilities, you probably wouldn't put Athens at the top of your list. It's not that the Greeks aren't kind souls; it's just that they don't do public awareness very well. It's a private matter for them.

On the other hand, the Paralympics are set to change all that. The formidable mayor, Dora Bakoyannis, whose mother had polio, has a personal stake in the changing of perceptions and €18.5 million has been budgeted for improving accessibility on pavements and road surfaces.

When Mrs Bakoyannis sets something in motion, it tends to thunder. Her father was premier of Greece, her first husband, also a politician, was killed by a terrorist bomb, and she herself survived an assassination attempt when she was mayor elect in 2002. Two years on, she is positively off the scale in the popularity stakes, and if she says Athens will be fully accessible, then it truly will.

It's just that it isn't yet. Athens, against nearly all predictions, was ready for the Olympics; for the Paras it is half-finished. Wheelchairs glide off the pavement on one side of the street but have to negotiate a full kerb - and they do like a big drop off their pavements here - on the other.

There again, as far as I can tell, the competitors here simply get on with things. Their sport has started and they are fully committed to the pursuit of the 518 medals that are up for grabs. That's 217 more than at the Olympics. Fewer sports, more medals. It's a classification thing, but to get bogged down in the categories of disability is to be distracted from just how good all the athletes are in their particular discipline.

Or disciplines. Visually impaired swimmer Tricia Zorn from California, now 40 years old, has won 41 gold medals at Paralymics since 1980. She's going for another four here.

She may be shut out by the British. Paralympic swimming could be dominated by, well, us. Britain won 15 gold, 24 silver and 23 bronze medals in Sydney and all the multiple medallists from those games will be here: James Crisp, David Roberts Jody Cundy, Sascha Kindred and Giles Long. There are teenage sensations in 18-year-old Anthony Stevens, 17-year-old Rhiannon Henry and the 15-year-old David Hill, who is the youngest member of the British team.

Athletics will produce medals for other well-known names. Tanni Grey-Thompson will be looking to add to her personal tally of 14 medals from four Games, in the T53 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m here. Blind 5,000m runner Bob Matthews will be competing in his seventh Games, his first being in Arnhem in 1980 where he played goalball.

In team sports, basketball grabs most of the headlines. It was the first vehicle used by neurologist Dr Ludwig Guttman to promote rehabilitation through sport at Stoke Mandeville after the Second World War.

Rugby players at the Paralympics, being tetraplegics - mostly from injuries sustained in car crashes or while playing able-bodied rugby - are more limited in their mobility than their basketball counterparts. But what they lack in movement they make up for in ferocity. Their sport began in Canada as 'murder ball,' which is considered politically insensitive now, but which gives you an idea of what goes on.

There's actually not a whole lot of rugby in it. It's an indoor sport with just four players from a squad of 12 on court at one time. You don't have to touch the ball down over the goalline, and forward passes are permitted. As are collisions. No, they are obligatory.

And if you want something a little more ethereal to arise from the clash of metal, follow the fortunes of Troye Collins, who was injured while playing hooker for the South African Forces in 1992 and who came to Britain to 'change my life', as he puts it. Britain play their first game this morning against Belgium, a slightly politically incorrect sport in a slightly politically incorrect city. They're made for each other.