London is ready to lay on the "biggest and best" Paralympic Games ever that will "move the dial" in how paralympic sport is viewed around the world, dpa cited organizers as saying Tuesday. The 11-day competition, which starts Wednesday, hopes to benefit from the "buzz and momentum" created by the Olympics held in the city from July 27 to August 12. "We are on course to lay on the biggest and best Paralympics ever," sports minister Hugh Robertson told journalists Tuesday. Paul Deighton, chief executive of organizing committee LOCOG, promised "amazing and enthralling" days ahead. A total of 2.4 million tickets had been sold for the event, with 100,000 still available, making the London Paralympics likely to become the first sell-out in their history. "The Paralympics were not an afterthought, they were integrated in the planning from the beginning," said Robertson. "All paralympic requirements were built in from the word go, and we hope to see the benefits from that." The Games, for which 4,300 athletes have come to London, will kick off with an opening ceremony in the Olympic stadium in Straford, east London, late Wednesday. They will be officially declared open by Queen Elizabeth II. The Paralympic flame to ignite the cauldron will arrive at the stadium from the town of Stoke Mandeville, in Buckinghamshire, where the Paralympic Movement was born in 1948.
