Paralympics 2004: Two enduring images for perhaps two different Paralympic Games. In Boccia we call him the legendary Johnny Cronin and on the track, the soon-to-be-legendary Oscar Pistorious.

The Irishman and former Paralympic gold medallist is a shaker on the Boccia court, a sledger, fractious and competitive. Cronin embodies the spirit of all of us, who would wish we could live with a cerebral palsy disability such as his with the verve he radiates. Cronin, and athletes like him, should be the lights of the Paralympic Games but those in track and field; athletes such as Pistorious, a 200-metre champion, carry that torch.

A double amputee below the knee, the 17-year-old from South Africa stands like a centaur, a perfectly sculpted sprinters body sprouting from his curled titanium and carbon fibre legs. Pistorious towers over the rest of us, his prosthetics giving him an imperious command in height. He pushes the Paralympic ideal in a different way to Cronin and has become one of the athletes who may through his ability further blur the lines between Olympic and Paralympic definitions, yet he and Cronin are part of the same thinking family.

While the family philosophy remains intact, it is also evident it is being pulled from different directions. The Chinese have come to Athens, half-hearted, as they didn't send athletes to compete in all 19 sports. Still, they have swept the board. The team have won more medals than the next two nations put together, Britain and Australia.

At Sydney 2000 it was Australia that led the medals table with 149. Next was Britain and third was Spain. China was sixth. In Beijing 2008 the Chinese will be making their point even stronger. Their politicians have a single-minded mentality. You mention human rights and they hand you the Paralympic medals they won. They stated on Monday they will field athletes in all of the sports in Beijing.

No surprise that both the US and Britain were brazenly medal-driven teams, while Ireland was not. That dichotomy in mission statement is a problem for the International Paralympic Federation (IPF). Teams are openly promoting elitism and the media are clearly championing certain sports. The collective is unbalancing the whole act. Ireland now finds itself somewhere between, medal driven but also unapologetic about ensuring the inclusiveness of their programme, the driving force of paralympism.

"We've two distinct levels," says technical director Liam Harbison. "We do target specific medal prospects through the enhancement programme. We have to also offer opportunities to come here and compete. Other teams just target the medals. We're not in that league. If we went down that road, we might have six athletes in the team. I think that is dangerous for the movement as a whole. To send athletes who are only going to win medals . . . that's an issue that needs to be addressed.

"I don't ever see the situation where Ireland will only send medal prospects to the Paralympic Games. If that was the case we'd have had nine to 10 athletes here, who wouldn't have personal or seasonal bests."

With three silver medals and a bronze, the management have declared these Games a success for Ireland. The 13 gold medals won in Seoul will never be equalled, while four medals in Beijing will be difficult to repeat despite the enduring will of former gold medallist Cronin and the burgeoning talent of runners such as 17-year-old Conall McNamara.

"I think you'd have to say this was a success," says Harbison. "There were 23 more countries here than at Sydney. That means standards have gone through the roof, yet we've four medals. Before coming I would have said we were targeting six possible medals. A two-thirds return, I think is phenomenal.

"Sure, Bejing is going to be even more tough. You're going to have more countries again and probably won't have any extra places across the range of sports. We'd 39 athletes in Sydney, 41 here. But we'd a soccer team this time and that accounts for 12 people. Take out the soccer and we're 25 per cent down. The challenge for us is to make sure we're a reasonably sized team going to Beijing."

The tracking of talent in Ireland is a problem and the movement agrees it may need to become more sophisticated.

Four of the nine-man All Black wheelchair rugby team in Athens were catastrophically injured playing rugby. Garrett Culliton, who came fourth in the shot put, was also disabled playing rugby for Wanderers but struggles to generate real interest in wheelchair rugby in Ireland.

"Obviously if someone has a spinal injury, they have a lot of psychological and emotional issues to cope with," says Harbison. "There is no reason why a year or so later we cannot contribute to their rehabilitation. We need to develop better and make representations to people. But that's really the job of the NGBs (national governing bodies)."

Paralympism's drive is to dispel the stigma surrounding disability and, the Irish team programme states, "to illuminate the realm of the possibility". That is alive and well though a few issues remain. Mixing different disability classes into one event, where world records are rewarded with fifth place, is inequitable and is anti-sport, while the hard drive for medals is in danger of taking the Games beyond the reasons they were established.

The four years to China may solve the first, the second will be fuelled by the needs and desire of the athletes themselves. To win.