Irish participants in the Paralympic Games in Sydney have done themselves - and their country - proud. When the games closed yesterday, disabled Irish athletes had secured a total of nine medals: five gold, three silver and one bronze. After the Games in Atlanta in 1996, the Irish paralympic team finished 45th in the medals table. At the close of Sydney, Ireland stood 31st in the table. The progress is thus significant and commendable. And so, when the team comes home from Australia, its members should be accorded a welcome befitting returning Olympic heroes - for that is what they are.
The Sydney Paralypmic Games have been acclaimed as the most successful to date and have set a standard which Athens will find difficult to equal in four years' time. With Sydney, the Paralympic Games have truly come into their own. The idea of competitive sport for the disabled has grown from humble beginnings: wheelchair athletics at Stoke Mandeville in England in 1948 were staged mainly for ex-servicemen trying to come to terms with the results of injuries sustained in the Second World War.
From small beginnings grow great things. At Sydney, some 4,000 athletes from 125 countries competed to the best of their ability and in the best tradition of the Olympics ideals. And the public responded: rarely were venues not filled to capacity. Schools throughout Australia took a huge interest in the games thanks to an imaginative policy of encouraging children to follow the fortunes of individual athletes. The games will thus have a lasting and wholly beneficial legacy beyond the achievements enjoyed by the participants, their families and friends.
The organisers of the Paralypmics have a mission statement: "To inspire the world by staging a Paralympic Games which sets new standards in excellence, enabling the athletes to achieve their best". The invented word "paralympic" also reveals the thinking behind the games: the syllable "para" does not derive from paraplegic, or otherwise denote disability. Rather, it is taken from the word parallel. This, surely, is the nub of the matter: the Paralympic Games are not about being equal to the Olympic Games. They are about disabled athletes striving to be best against their equals; and like the other games, they are about trying, about participating.
When the German paralympic athlete, Martin Horn, who is missing most of his left leg, turned up to train in Sydney's Olympic Park, he sported a tattoo on his right calf. A single Chinese character spelt a word that clearly meant much to him. The word was "aspire". The aspiration to be the best one can, whatever the disability, is a mark of a true Olympian. The brave and moving displays by the Paralympians in Sydney, say much about the human spirit - a great deal more, it must be said, than some of the mean-minded comments expressed elsewhere of late.