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	TX: 17.09.04 -听PARALYMPICS REPORT PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY & PETER WHITE

	THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.听 BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. BARCLAY Athens has no sooner begun to recover from one big party then it's putting out the bunting for another. In a few hours time the Paralympics get underway with the opening ceremony in the Olympic stadium. Four thousand athletes from 145 countries will be taking part with as many administrators and support staff on hand. The Paralympics is now reckoned to be the world's second largest sporting event. Peter White will be reporting from Athens over the next 10 days and he's in the busy international broadcasting centre now. Peter, a few months ago you were in Athens and you were fairly sceptical about the suitability of the city's infrastructure for people with disabilities. How do things look now? 听 WHITE Well Liz the truth of the matter is that for a disabled visitor to Athens, particularly a wheelchair user, things are still pretty flaky on the streets and we'll come back to that in a moment. But as for the athletes, well they're a fairly pampered bunch. Their transport is provided of course and as for their accommodation, well the reaction to the village has been universally favourable, indeed one veteran Paralympian said the words I thought I'd never hear - better than Sydney. The other cause of anxiety when Athens was announced as the venue for this was the idea that Greece didn't have a tradition of Paralympic sport and indeed it didn't have a good record of encouraging participation of disabled people in the community generally. Well I got an interesting side light on this when I talked to one of the youngest British Paralympians - that's Sophie Chistiansen, she's 16, she's a member of the equestrian team, which is one of our strongest hopes for gold medals. But she came feeling a bit apprehensive about what she might find. 听 CHRISTIANSEN Well actually my mum lived here for three years when she was younger and she told me that the Greek attitude for disabled was not very good and she only saw one disabled person in the three years she was here. But in getting here they've made a real effort. They're just really nice people here. 听 BARCLAY Sophie Christiansen. I don't know how the athletes, including Sophie, would take to being called pampered Peter but how are we expected to do overall in the medals table? 听 WHITE Well pampered they are as far as athletes are concerned. The management is being a bit coy about this Liz and frankly they're using the same tactic as the British Olympic team did - in other words talk yourself down, so that you can then appear to surprise everyone when you do well. But they do go in - it has to be said - with the burden of having been second in the medal table last time in Sydney with 41 golds. Phil Lane is head of the British team. 听 LANE We've clearly had one or two athletes who've moved on and we've got a slightly smaller team this time. So I think it's realistic to say expectations need to be high but tempered in the light of those things. 听WHITE And if I twisted your arm and said how many golds would satisfy you at the end of the games? 听 LANE If you twisted my arm Peter I might be able to tell you any number but I think we're really looking at somewhere between 35 and 40 golds. 听 BARCLAY How much is this very positive picture of Athens, that we've heard then from the athletes, the real one? 听 WHITE Well that's an interesting question Liz. Strangely the least positive response that I've had so far has actually come from a Greek journalist - John Hadoulis - he writes for an English speaking Athens newspaper and he says - and he's been watching this for some time - that there's a lot of window dressing going on here, he claims that the problem, for example, of congested pavements - cars all over the place and motorbikes - will be dealt with during the Paralympics alright, as it was during the Olympics, but it'll go back to its old ways immediately afterwards. And he also says that the cleanup campaign and enforcement of the parking laws only happens in the centre of the city, where everyone is watching. 听 HADOULIS If you go even 200 metres beyond the centre of the city you will find no ramps, you will find sidewalks that are hard, even for able-bodied people, to walk on - they're cracked, they're very small, cluttered with garbage and debris. And even if the centre has improved dramatically and we should praise them for that, it hasn't yet spread to places even considered part of central Athens really. 听 WHITE John Hadoulis and I'll be running the gauntlet of the Athens pavements, because we'll be looking at that in more detail next week and how the city is really doing. 听 BARCLAY Well good luck Peter, have a good trip, talk to you soon, thanks for joining us. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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