Paris has chance to raise the bar again after London high fell flat

OVER a dozen days, the task for Paris is clear: drive fresh momentum behind a movement that, most critics agree, has not moved anywhere near quickly enough in the past dozen years.

- Malik Ouzia

The Paralympic Games of London 2012 were, by just about every metric and feeling going, the most successful of all time, but the idea that they might permanently transform the perception and profile of disability sport around the world has been disproved by the fact they remain unrivaled almost three full cycles on.

"It's kind of embarrassing saying that an event that happened 12 years ago was the best one ever," said British wheelchair racing star Hannah Cockroft this year.

In Rio, the Games felt an afterthought, made so by budget cuts forced by Olympic overspend and poor ticket sales in the build-up. In Tokyo, too, there was a sense of disconnect between the Paralympics and their Olympic predecessor, that the two halves did not quite belong to the same whole.