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Listed below are comments made by Willow between Saturday, 2nd August 2008 and Saturday, 2nd August 2008.

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Celebrating 60 years of Paralympic sport 8:58pm on 02 Aug 2008 There is such a rich history of the Paralympics it's easy to gloss over some of the trials and tribulations of recent times.
In 1980 the BBC covered the games from Arnhem and it was this that inspired me to my career as a Paralympian. But the reason the games were in Arnhem instead of Moscow was that the Soviets refused to acknowledge sport for people with disabilities. Then, having condemned the Soviets the US managed to leave 1/2 of the athletes in limbo in 1984 when the 'wheelchair' Olympics was cancelled at short notice leaving the games to be rescued by Stoke Mandeville.
So it was with much trepidation that we went to Seoul in 1988.
I remember being met at Kimpo airport by my dad who was working out there at the time. He pushed his way to the front of a crowd that had gathered to greet us and announced to me "I've managed to get a ticket for the opening ceremony; they've gone nuts on it over here." This was the first inkling we had of just how big the games had become.
I remember as if it were yesterday when we were lined up on the warm up track waiting to go into the stadium for the opening ceremony. You couldn't really hear much more than the traffic going past on the neighbouring highway. Then as we entered the stadium it hit you, 90,000 screaming voices.
I've done it now 4 times since then and whilst each opening ceremony is special for its own different reason, Seoul for me represented the coming of age of the modern Paralympic Games. Following 8 years of being let down by the world’s super powers, the South Koreans hauled the Paralympic movement into the modern era that we see today.

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