Loved the updates G, really appreciate the effort. That shot down the 100m track is incredible, how you operate that I have no idea.

I'm quite sad the whole para/o-lympic party is over. It's been incredible. I genuinely think it's changed people's views of disabled sport, even mine, and I actually know some people who do disabled sport.

I just hope that they somehow keep the momentum going, with more sport in schools, more participation, more coverage of niche or disabled sports on TV.

It's amazing how sport can bring a country together, raise spirits, give people a sense of pride and unity.

For me, I'll never for the moment my wife and I and 12 complete strangers cheered and screamed and generally went mental as the women's team pursuit of Laura Trott, Dani King and Joanna Rowsell smashed it and won gold. We were in the pub at the top of Paddington station, inhibition be damned. How very un-British, and it felt great.

And so it ends.
I'm back in Glasgow now with a few days off before returning to the football circuit, so perhaps a good time to pause and reflect for a minute.

Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
I'm going back to the start...

I was asked to cover the Paralympics months ago, and I very nearly said no.
The money was good, but in the back of my head I figured it would just be more hassle than it was worth. I also wasn't particularly confidant that I could actually do justice to what they wanted me to do. The head-on ultramotion camera on the athletics is as difficult as camera work gets, and while I use these cameras a lot on the football, what I do with it there is very different to what I knew they were asking me to do with the Paralympic coverage. 
Still, I love a challenge, so I figured, "What the hell, let's give it a go."

We arrived onsite and spent days rigging, trying to get everything working, and just generally hanging about, completely unaware of what we were about to get into. The weather was dull and the stadium was empty. It had all the signs of being just another job.



I'd tell you about the opening ceremony, but it's so long ago, and so much has happened since, that I actually can't remember anything about it...except that it was spectacular and I  thoroughly enjoyed it.



We then had a day off while they cleared the stadium, and on Friday morning the competition began.



We were in very early, and I don't think anyone expected much of a crowd. Damn me if 80,000 people didn't fill the stadium for the first morning session. 
We were gobsmacked.
It stayed this way right through to the closing ceremony. Every seat was taken for every single session. The Gods had smiled on us too, and the weather was blisteringly hot for the entire duration of the games.



We worked 15-17 hour shifts every day, and no-one complained. We were, to a man, all having so much fun that nobody cared about the gruelling schedule, and when there was some downtime in the afternoon, I generally spent it sleeping on a pile of cardboard boxes in the Ch4 production office.



I cannot find the words to describe what an astounding experience the paralympics was.
It was like taking a vacation on another planet. One where everyone is polite and good humoured. One where the colour of your skin doesn't matter. A place where nobody stares at disability in pity. A place where everyone is equal and the only thing that matters is the human spirit on display.
We were in the eye of the hurricane and it was powerful stuff.
I spent two weeks laughing and crying in equal measure into my viewfinder. It was beautiful.
It was the summer we took back the Union flag from political extremists and wore it with pride. There was no jingoistic nonsense. People were just genuinely proud to be British. 
Nobody wanted it to end.
The closing ceremony was unbelievably spectacular. I'll probably never be in the middle of such a riot of sound and colour again, and I'm so glad I didn't miss it.





It's over now. I'm back home, but there's a little piece of my heart I left in the east end of London. A faraway glint in my eyes that says, "I was there, and I was part of something very, very special.
I rose to the challenge and I'm very proud of my contribution. What I did played a big part in the television coverage, and if the motto of the games was "Inspire a Generation," then I like to think that somewhere there are kids whose conceptions of disability will now be markedly different to those of their forebears. Children with disabilities, who will have been inspired by the athletes of London 2012 and will now be thinking, "I could do that."
It's lovely to think that the bedroom walls of able bodied children will now be adorned with posters of a new breed of hero. Somewhere, there's a child looking up at a poster of David Weir on their bedroom wall and thinking,"I wish I could be like him."
That's the legacy of London 2012. It's a beautiful thing.



I'll leave it at that then. End on a montage. That's what we'll do. I'm not a fan of Coldplay, but The Scientist was a fitting end to the proceedings, and the montage featuring a tonne of my ultramotion footage that accompanied it on the massive screens around the stadium made me immensely proud and probably sums everything up better than my ramblings ever can.

Run VT...


Made in Britain

g.man

Quality in every sense.

g