Ireland bid to reach new heights at London Games

PARALYMPICS Ireland are bidding to qualify an unprecedented 50 athletes for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

The movement has never been stronger, a fact reinforced at the IPC world athletics championships in Auckland where world record holder for the 800m in the T37 category, Michael McKillop, set a new mark for the 1500m yesterday, while Catherine Wayland won silver in the F51 club throw on Saturday.

McKillop and Orla Barry are tipped to become Ireland’s first world champions of 2011 later this week in the T37 800m and F57 discus respectively.

Meanwhile, Jason Smyth, who made history as the first Paralympian to compete in the European athletic championships in Barcelona where he made the semi-final, and is the 100m and 200m Paralympic champion, had to miss out in New Zealand due to injury. Throw in current Boccia world champion Padraic Moran and world handcycling champion Mark Rohan and the standing of Ireland internationally is evident.

Keen to maintain the progress at all levels the national organisation re-launched itself yesterday as Paralympics Ireland, having previously been known as the Paralympic Council of Ireland. The association underwent a facelift with new branding it hopes will spread to a broader spectrum.

“We did an awareness audit and realised the reach of Paralympics in the Irish psyche was very poor” said chief executive, Liam Harbison yesterday. “Our corporate partners liked who and what we represented but felt that we needed a fresher and cleaner image and so we decided to drop the word ‘Council’ from our title. Speaking to the athletes, it was clear they wanted to wear the shamrock so we incorporated that into our new logo. The International Paralympic logo has to be included as well, while we also wanted to encompass the feeling that people have when they see Paralympians compete which is why we have included the tagline ‘Inspiring Beyond Belief’.

“We’re going to get a huge profile from London with Channel 4 committed to providing 150 hours of coverage and RTÉ also going to show it. Whatever image we present there will stick so we want that to be dynamic.”

The performances of the athletes will probably be the most significant factor however and while the target is to equal the 2008 return of five medals, Harbison hopes the strongest team to travel from these shores will accumulate more.

“We have named a (preliminary) panel of 70 athletes across nine sports and those athletes would have had to achieve certain criteria to make this panel. We will focus all our efforts on trying to get them to qualify. We’re looking to get 50 qualified which would be our biggest team ever… we had 45 in Beijing.”

It’s a tall order with only 4000 athletes from 165 nations making it in 21 disciplines at the Paralympic Games. But the High Performance programme, led by director Nancy Chillingworth, is producing positive consistent results. This programme has been funded by the Irish Sports Council, and Harbison is thankful they avoided the heavy cuts experienced by many other bodies. The support of Renault, Allianz, Cadburys, O’Neills and OCS Ireland has also been crucial.