ATHENS (AFP) - The world's premier event for disabled athletes was to begin in Athens, where 4000 competitors from more than 140 countries were readying for the opening ceremonies of the 12th Paralympics.
The Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyianni, declared her city "absolutely ready" for the Games. "Where there is a will there is a way," she said on Thursday. "We are working to make Athens accessible to all, a city where all are welcome and respected."
The opening ceremony on Friday is sold out, and well over half of 500,000 event tickets have so far been bought, mainly by Athenians, the mayor said.
The Games -- which come less than three weeks after Greece hosted the 2004 Olympic Games -- run through September 28.
All the essential ingredients of a sports extravaganza are here: a cosmopolitan capital filled with national delegations, visitors and media, last-minute preparations at venues and palpable anticipation as athletes gear up to go for the gold.
There is even a whiff of controversy in the air as China and Taiwan spar over whether Wu Shu-chen, the disabled wife of Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, will be allowed to lead the de facto island-nation's delegation. First indications are that Beijing will have its way.
Besides the sheer and unprecedented size of these Games, which have become the second largest sporting event in the world after the summer Olympics, another indication of their growing visibility is the presence of senior political leaders.
Both German President Horst Koehler and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will be on hand on Friday to support their countrymen and women, and French President Jacques Chirac personally saw off his nation's delegation from Paris.
But organizers want to keep the emphasis squarely on sports as the official motto of the Paralympics suggests - "focus on the athlete and not on the disability."
They see the Games as part of a larger effort across all societies to reverse the deeply-rooted reflex of defining the disabled by their disability.
"The Paralympics, to be sure, have accelerated change," Bakoyianni said in reference to Greece. "They have motivated us to not only alter our perceptions but also certain everyday realities," she added, citing improvements in accessibility and infrastructure in preparation for the Games.
Greece ranked last among European nations in a 2002 Eurobarometer poll measuring the extent to which able-bodied people felt "comfortable" in the presence of disabled people.
Athletes will compete in 19 different disciplines, among them athletics and swimming. Team sports include 5-a-side and 7-a-side football, wheelchair basketball and rugby, as well as volleyball.
Most sports have several kinds of disabled athletes, namely those with impaired vision, amputation, cerebral palsy, spinal injuries and "les autres," French for "the others" that covers persons with conditions that do not fit into any other category.
Competitors with intellectual disabilities will square off against each other in table tennis and basketball, but will not earn medals as in all the other events.
In terms of organization, the Athens Paralympics differ from previous Games in at least two respects, according to the Athens 2004 president, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.
"For the first time we maintained the same organizational structure, the same people, preparing the two events simultaneously," he said, referring to the summer Olympics which ended on August 29.
"We have also secured the presence and accommodation of the Paralympic athletes without charging a fee," another first, he added.
The other sports featured at the Paralympics are archery, cycling, equestrian, wheelchair fencing, goalball, judo, powerlifting, sailing, shooting, wheelchair tennis and boccia.