Irish travel with real medal hopes

The Sydney Olympics may already be a fading memory, but the city is set to go through it all again when the Paralympics open in Stadium Australia tomorrow.

The opening ceremony will kick off 11 days of competition, which between now and Sunday week will see the 39-strong Irish team compete with the world's best disabled athletes. And, like Atlanta four years ago, the team has arrived in Sydney with strong expectations.

With a number of current world champions, world record holders and previous Paralympic medallists among the Irish squad medal hopes are realistically high. In the Atlanta Games, the Irish brought home one gold, three silver and six bronze medals, but now, with full team funding from the Irish Sports Council, the preparations and back-up support has been stronger than ever. Anne Ebbs, secretary-general of the Paralympic Council of Ireland, is confident that the team can improve on the results of four years ago.

The Paralympics have grown into the second largest sporting event in the world since first introduced after the Rome Olympics of 1960 and the event is now surpassed only by the summer Olympics themselves. Sydney will play host to a record 4,000 Paralympic athletes from just over 100 countries. Among the more experienced members of the Irish team is wheelchair athlete Patrice Dockery, who competed in her first games in 1988 in Seoul and at Barcelona and Atlanta. Also in the team is veteran campaigner Michael Cunningham, representing Ireland for the eighth consecutive time. He took gold in the javelin in Toronto back in 1976, but competes here with the table tennis team, his more familiar event.

Ireland will be represented in seven of the 18 sports included in the Games. As well as athletics and table tennis, the other sports to be represented are boccia (a form of the ball-tossing sport of Greek origin), equestrian, judo, sailing, and swimming. First into competition will be Dubliner Tim Culhane, who opens his quest for gold in judo on Thursday.