Paralympics blog: A moment of peace after velodrome glory
Shropshire paralympics coach Chris Furber, who works with the British para-cycling team, blogs from London 2012 after an incredible haul of medals.
I’m sat here again on the balcony of our apartment looking out over the Paralympic village on the morning after the final day of track racing.
All seems very peaceful and quiet compared to the intensity and pressure of the Velodrome over the last 72 hours.
The Road team have left the village for our Brands Hatch base in preparation for the Road events which start on Wednesday and I get a chance to reflect on what has been, to use a cliché, a roller coaster ride of emotion.
We have finished the track competition on top of the medals table with 15 Medals of which five are Gold, we have medalled in every event we entered and the athletes have recorded some lifetime best performances.
Among all these positives are some rock bottom lows. You may have seen the news of Jody Cundy’s spectacular breakdown after being denied a second start in the Kilo and also our disqualification of World Champion Anthony Kappes in the Tandem Kilo for two mechanical issues.
Issues like these are very rare to our programme and we work really hard to limit mistakes but in the pressure cooker of the Paralympic Velodrome we have made costly errors. I guess these are the things that make sport interesting but at the time they are really hard to swallow.
The World of Paralympic sport has moved on. In the last four years I would say the performance gain is as much as you would see in three Olympic cycles of able-bodied sport. The era of professionalism in para-sport is well and truly on us and as a result we are seeing some incredible levels of performance from para-athletes. This can only be good for the Paralympic movement as it becomes more about the performance than that back stories of the athletes.
The atmosphere within the velodrome was unlike anything I have ever experienced before and I’m grateful to everyone who came and watched and cheered for the team. The track kit is now packed away and tomorrow I will head down to Brands Hatch to meet with the rest of the team and get the road section of this games underway.
Follow Chris at on Twitter - @chrisfurber