Four Paralympic Flames To Be Created Today

Four separate teams are scaling the highest peaks of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to create the Paralympic flames.

Once at the summits of Scafell Pike, Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Slieve Donard, they will strike flint against steel to spark fire.

The flames will then be carried down in lanterns ahead of celebrations in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

The Paralympic Games opening ceremony takes place on Wednesday 29 August.

The teams are made up of scouts, mountain guides and people with disabilities, and are expected to take about four hours to reach the peaks.

Lord Coe, who has joined scouts as they climb Snowdon, told the BBC: “We wanted to focus on human endeavour and team work and that’s why, from Stoke Mandeville – the spiritual home of the Paralympic Games – into the Paralympic Stadium, we are going to have a 24-hour relay.

“We wanted to make it different and lighting it on the four tallest peaks in the four home countries was a great way of starting it off.”

Mountaineer Kevin Shields, who has epilepsy and is missing part of his left hand, is in the Scottish group.

He was the first disabled climber to enter the Ice World Cup and has scaled some of the UK’s most challenging mountains.

He said: “It is such an honour to be included in the Paralympic Flame creation. Ben Nevis is such a unique place of beauty and the perfect setting for this once-in-a-lifetime moment”.

The teams will use a ferrocerium rod and strike it against a rough steel surface to produce the sparks that will create the flame.

In London, a ceremonial cauldron will be lit in Trafalgar Square, and Belfast’s festival will have a lantern procession outside City Hall and a cauldron-lighting outside Stormont.

Scotland’s flame will light a ceremonial cauldron on the Mound in Edinburgh and a lantern procession at Meadowbank Sports Centre, while Cardiff’s ceremony will include a cauldron-lighting outside City Hall and a lantern procession in Roald Dahl Place.

The flames will then unite in the home of the Paralympic movement, Stoke Mandeville, ahead of a 24-hour torch relay which starts at 20:00 BST on 28 August and travels overnight to London.

It will see the Paralympic flame carried 92 miles by 580 torchbearers, working in teams of five, from Stoke Mandeville Stadium through Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and all six of London’s host boroughs to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

There it will be used to light the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Games on the evening of 29 August.

Meanwhile, Heathrow Airport is gearing up for its busiest day as athletes begin arriving ahead of the Paralympics.

And the first of the Paralympic Games lanes has come into force on the M4, taking traffic from Heathrow into central London.

It will operate each day as needed from 0500 to 1000 BST, with “ordinary” traffic able to use it outside these times.

The M4 lane is part of the 8.7-mile Paralympic Route Network (PRN).

The rest of the restricted lanes will come into force next Wednesday, when the Games begin.

British Airways said in the run-up to the Games it would be flying in teams from 25 countries, including ParalympicsGB.

Along with the athletes, the airline is also transporting equipment such as 300 wheelchairs, firearms, weapon bags, physiotherapist cases, bike boxes, tandem bikes, bow and arrows, hand cycles and boccia kits.

Andy Lord, BA operations director, said it had been a “mammoth operation”.

“It is a privilege to fly thousands of athletes, their coaching teams and their sporting equipment into London for the Paralympic Games and follows on from the great service we delivered for the Olympic Games,” he said.