Countdown to the London Olympics 2012 commences

Just over a week ago, the British capital city, London, one of the most populous and most cosmopolitan in the world, began the countdown for the last 100 days up to its staging of the 2012 Olympics, the biggest sporting event on earth.{{more}} As of today, Friday April 27, there are a mere 13 weeks to go before the spectacular opening ceremony at the newly-built Olympic Stadium in east London.

Two weeks after the closure of the 2012 Olympiad, it will be the turn of the physically-challenged athletes. Their moments of glory come in the context of the 2012 Paralympics to be staged at the same venue from August 29 to September 9.It is a triumph for social equality that the physically-challenged athletes are now permitted to compete at the same venue, right after the major Games. It was not always like that, for a long struggle had to be waged since the first events, in 1948 right after World War II for disabled war veterans and called the International Wheelchair Games. Twelve years later it was open to all physically-challenged athletes and recognised as the Paralympics since 1988.

Participation in the games by athletes from the English-speaking Caribbean did not occur until after the last World War, at the London Games in 1948. They struck gold right away, in the person of Jamaican 400-metre runner Arthur Wint, and added two silvers to boot! But the largest Caribbean island, Cuba, had been participating long before that, since 1900 in fact, winning its first medal four years later.

Cuba is also the only Caribbean country to have won medals outside the more traditional sports-track and field, boxing, swimming, weightlifting, cycling and the better-known team sports. Its athletes have stood on the medal podium in such sports as fencing , sailing, shooting, judo, taekwondo, canoeing and baseball, (no longer an Olympic sport).

Over the three and a half weeks when the Games will be staged, athletes from almost 200 countries the world over will compete in 304 events in 36 different sports. Caribbean interests will mainly be in the high-profile athletics events with the formidable Jamaican contingent expected to once more reinforce its global dominance in the sprints. But other Caribbean countries are making their mark too and all hopes in the small eastern Caribbean islands will be on Grenada’s sensational young 400-metre runner, Kirani James, to see whether he can repeat the gold medal he won in this event in the World Indoor championships in March.

SEARCHLIGHT will continue to focus on the Olympics right up to the opening and provide coverage during the Games.