LONDON — Wheelchair-bound physicist Stephen Hawking challenged athletes to “look to the stars” on Wednesday as he helped open a record-setting Paralympics Games that will run for 11 days in near sold-out venues. Close on the heels of the hard-act-to-follow London 2012 Olympics, thousands of dancers and stunning fireworks added to the good cheer on the opening night for an audience of 80,000. Hawking, diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21 and told in 1963 he had two years to live, began the ceremony by reading from the stage. “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Be curious,” Hawking said from his wheelchair, speaking through his famous computerised voice system for communication. The London Paralympics will host the biggest number of athletes since their official birth in 1960 at the Rome Games, with 4,280 competitors representing 164 nations compared to 400 participants from 23 countries in the Italian capital. Earlier, the Paralympic cauldron was lit in London on Wednesday to burn for 11 days of sport at the biggest and most high-profile Games that organizers hope will transform ideas about disability the world over. The flame arrived in spectacular fashion, brought down a zip wire from the 115-meter (377-feet) high observation tower overlooking the Olympic Stadium in east London by a British soldier wounded on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Royal Marine commando Joe Townsend, who lost both legs when he stepped on a homemade bomb, handed the torch to Britain's five-a-side football team captain Dave Clarke, who passed it to Margaret Maughan, Britain's first Paralympic gold medalist at the inaugural Paralympics in Rome in 1960. She then lit the petals of the cauldron inscribed with the names of all participating countries, triggering a firework display in the skies overhead. Queen Elizabeth II earlier officially opened the Games at the showpiece ceremony involving more than 3,000 volunteer and professional performers, many of them with a disability, combining music, dance and aerial acrobatics. South Africa's Oscar Pistorius, who became the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics earlier this month, and was a flag-bearer for the Paralympics opening. — Agencies
