Athens 2004 Paralympics: Biggest and Best Ever               The Paralympics are the games for sports men and women with a disability. They were the idea of Doctor Ludwig Guttman, a doctor working at Stoke Mandeville hospital in the UK. This famous hospital looks after people who can no longer walk, or cannot move at all. After the Second World War, in 1945, the hospital was full of badly injured soldiers. To give them hope, Dr Guttman started the Paralympics in 1948. They were held at the same time as the London Olympics; doctors gave out the prizes and nurses were employed as referees .               The first official Paralympics took place in Rome in 1960, with 400 athletes from 23 countries competing. By 2004 they had become ten times bigger: nearly 4,000 athletes from 140 countries competed in 19 different sports. The youngest competitor was the 11-year-old swimmer Xu Qingqing from China, the oldest, 66-year-old David Williams, a sailor from Canada. The games were a great success for China, the oldest, 66-year-old David Williams, a sailor from Canada. The games were a great success for China, which won 141 medals, 63 of them gold. Britain came second with 94 medals, 35 of them gold. China's disabled dance team closed the games with a wonderful dance performance.                The games were also a success for the organizers. Ever since the failure of the Paralympics in Atlanta, USA, in 1996, the organizers have been nervous of empty seats. But in Australia in 2000, the Paralympics were shown every day on TV and a million tickets were sold. Fifty thousand Australian schoolchildren were in the stadiums for the Sydney Paralympics, shouting and cheering. However pleased they were by the crowds, some of the competitors found this quite difficult. One blind runner said that for the first 800 meters of the 10,000 meter race he could not hear where the other runners were because of the noise. Whatever his feelings about it, he still won a gold; and in Athens 2004 the crowds were even bigger and noisier. When the British team got back to London after the games of 2004, more crowds came to welcome them home. Slowly, the Paralympic athletes are becoming as popular and as famous as the Olympic stars. One runner said the crowds caused a problem because   _  .
he wasn't used to crowds he couldn't hear the other runners he couldn't hear the referee he couldn't hear his coach's orders