2008 Olympics Updates

Having competed at the last five Paralympic Games it will be a new experience for me to be a spectator in Beijing. However, as a commentator I will still be close to the action and be able to speak to the team each day.

Trying to pick out ones to watch from the incredibly strong British swimming team is difficult.

Just to qualify onto the team you had to be ranked at least sixth in the world and it is a team that topped the medal table at the 2006 IPC World Championships.

There will be some familiar faces in Beijing who seem sure to medal - swimmers such as Sascha Kindred, Nyree Lewis, David Roberts, Jim Anderson and Natalie Jones.

However 45% of the team are first time Paralympians and they are likely to be in the mix too.

The GB swimming team have maintained their success for the same reasons cycling and sailing were so successful at the Olympics - funding, planning, attention to detail and focused athletes and staff.

Since the release of National Lottery funding to cover more than just capital projects, British Swimming has been able to invest in the development of talented athletes.

Simply throwing money at something will only get you so far. Team members like current head coach Lars Humer focus on getting all of the detail right all of the time and this doesn’t happen by chance.

There will already be a four-year plan in place to move the team on far beyond Beijing.

As with most sports, the athletes put in all the hard work required to get into physical shape but here there is a real sense of team in the broader sense.

Each component of the support team from strength and conditioning to sports psychology, from sports science to the office admin support, everyone is focused and passionate about helping the swimmers be the best they can be.

However, the British team will not have it all their own way. Ukraine has a very strong team of predominantly visually-impaired swimmers and, with stars like Erin Popovich and Jessica Long, the USA will accumulate a substantial medal haul.

Few swimmers will be as dominant as South Africa’s Natalie Du Toit in the women’s S9 events and of course there will be a very strong team representing the host nation China.

There are a couple of races that I am particularly looking forward to.

The Men’s 34-point freestyle relay is always very exciting and although GB won gold in both Sydney and Athens they are likely to be pushed very hard by Australia, with Matt Cowdrey leading the charge.

However, my pick for the entire competition would be the Men’s S8 400m freestyle which will be on 12 September.

It will feature Britain’s Sam Hynd, who is the world record holder for the event and, despite it being his first Games, he will be favourite.

He will face one of the most talented swimmers in the world Xiaofu Wang who will have the home crowd behind him. It is sure to be an exciting contest.

Just a small part of me is envious of this year’s Paralympic swimmers. To race in such a beautiful pool like the Water Cube will be an incredible experience for them.

Thankfully, the larger part of me has come to terms with the fact that my time as an athlete has been and gone and now I can just enjoy commentating on their endeavours.

Relaxed and ready is the mood in the ParalympicsGB camp on Thursday in the athletes’ village.

With the start of the Beijing Paralympics just a couple of days away, final preparations are being made - and there is an air of confidence around the team.

The likes of four-time Paralympian Jody Cundy are old hands at Paralympic villages, but for wheelchair basketball player Helen Freeman it is a whole new experience.

18-year-old Freeman (above left), from Watford, is the youngest member of the women’s team. She has been training hard for her Paralympic experience while studying for her A-levels.

A place at Reading University, studying Biochemistry, awaits Freeman when she gets back to London later this month - but she wants to make the most of her first Games.

“It has been an amazing experience so far. I now just want to get out there and play,” she told BBC Sport.

“I’ve been excited for months and now I can’t wait for it all to start.

“It was a bit of a culture shock at first to see so many disabled people together in the village, but after a few days I’ve got used to it and there is a special atmosphere around.

“The food hall is the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s like a school canteen but on an extreme scale. I reckon it’s about the size of two football pitches!”

Freeman’s team-mate Ann Wild, who plays alongside her at club level and will be playing in her fifth Games, has been offering hints on the temptations in the food hall - like eating grilled meats, and avoiding fast food.

“It’s good to be able to get help from people like Ann, who has so much experience and it’s all good advice,” she said.

And with comfortable beds, so much food that there are tough choices to be made, and every facility on your doorstep, what does Helen appreciate most?

“The kettle - that’s been most important in the apartment I’m in,” she replied.

“There’s been plenty of tea drunk - my team-mate Helen Turner normally plays mother and makes it, but we’ve all enjoyed it.”

Freeman, Turner and the rest of the 206-strong team are now gearing up for Saturday’s opening ceremony.

Then Sunday sees the start of action in basketball, boccia, cycling, equestrian, five-a-side football, judo, shooting, swimming and table tennis.

Chief executive and chef de mission Phil Lane described this 2008 crop as the best prepared athletes he’d ever seen, and the team are delighted with facilities on offer at the athletes’ village.

Lane explained: “It’s the first time we have gone straight into a facility used by a GB Olympic team, and we worked with the British Olympic Association to share as much equipment as we could. The hard work has paid off.

“Our athletes have sofas, chairs, tables, televisions and DVD players in their apartments as the Olympians did, to give them home comforts and a place they can call their own.

“In Athens we had just one spare bed - not even a spare room. Here we have room so if people need their own space for whatever reason, it is available to them.”

The vast majority of the British team are already here in the village - the equestrian riders and sailors will join them after their events in Hong Kong and Qingdao.

I spoke out against GB head coach Peter Suk immediately after my quarter-final defeat at the Olympic Games and then retracted it on reflection in my blog later that day.

Since then, I’ve had more time to reflect and I stand by what I originally said and if a lot of things don’t get better, I will pack it in and that’s not me being a sore loser.

Concerns need to be raised for the benefit of the whole of GB archery - if we can push on, the funding will get there, if not, the sport goes back to no funding and fewer competitors.

The next three or four years are going to be interesting with London 2012 coming up - we should get more input into what we need to become world and Olympic champions.

I know I’m capable of winning Olympic medals, but I need to have the right support.

This is the first year since I turned senior in 2002 that I’ve not won a medal in target or field archery despite shooting better than ever.

That has been down to a lack of confidence and the mental side of things and things going on behind the scenes.

This year, everything was wrong in the build-up to the Olympics with the selections for the World Cup circuit.

If we bombed out in the first round of a competition, Peter would say don’t worry - but confidence gets knocked if you’re not doing well.

We need a do-or-die mentality - put everything in until your fingers bleed.

We weren’t prepared properly.

I have no problem with Peter away from archery, but we have different methods within the sport.

Team morale was low at the Team GB holding camp in Macau but Peter said he expected that because of nerves and that it would be alright when we got to Beijing. But it wasn’t and it was down to the team to try and lift ourselves when we should have been focusing on competing.

Since my quarter-final defeat at the Olympics, I have not spoken to Peter. He left for Korea straight after the competition; there was no de-brief as we have always had after every other event, which was a bit strange.

I have always worked with my own personal coach at home and things have always gone perfectly - I have always been in charge and every medal I’ve ever won I’ve done by learning how to approach different matches mentally.

This year, the confidence has been non-existant and by the time I was knocked out at the Olympics, it was the first time I had lost control in a match situation.

I want to emphasise though that I really enjoyed my first Olympics experience despite the problems.

We’ve got a meeting in October with all the British archers who competed at the Olympics and Paralympics which will hopefully sort some things out.

Before that I’m off to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace as part of the big parade through London with all the other British Olympians on 16 October, which I’m really looking forward to.

Away from the competition, I had a great time in Beijing, spending time with my mates and going to watch other sports.

The best was watching Beth Tweddle in the gymnastics - we went because we know a few of the gymnasts from training at Lilleshall - I’ve never been to a gymnasium hall, it was massive and the atmosphere was great, particularly when the Chinese were competing.

Beth was unlucky and, even though we didn’t know much about the technical side, we thought her performance deserved third!

The athlete’s village is not as mad as everyone makes out - there were a lot of people there who still hadn’t competed when we had finished, so there is respect for everyone else.

It’s a different story in the city though - the bars were rammed, mainly with Australians! I tended to stick with the archery lads and lasses from Australia, America and Canada as we all know each other through competing across the world - it was a brilliant experience.

Me and Larry Godfrey had a few good days enjoying ourselves but we had the option to come home a day early before the closing ceremony, so we did.

When I got home and saw the closing ceremony and the plane carrying the rest of the team, I thought it would have been nice to be on it, but then it was nice to arrive at Heathrow and slip through unnoticed.

Since I got back to Cumbria, I’ve had a bit of post-Olympics blues - out in Beijing we were living in a bubble and everything was done for you so we could enjoy ourselves and focus on our event.

But when we got back, nobody told us how hard it is to get back to reality.

I was back a couple of days before I resumed training and my next aim is to qualify for the British field archery team for the World Games next year.

Field archery is extreme archery - there is a course with 24 targets which can be up a cliff, down a cliff, or across a ravine and you shoot three arrows at each target. They are all different sizes and on day one you have to guess how far away they are. On day two, the distances are marked.

I use the same bow as for the target archery, just with lighter arrows - field archery has always been at my heart, I was number one in the world a few years back and I’ve won many medals including a World Games silver and World Team silver and I was also European junior champion.

I was hoping to be given a wildcard into the British team for the World Games as I used to dominate the sport, but they wouldn’t accept me, so I’m training hard and I want to bang in some big scores at the first of two qualifiers next weekend in the north-east and prove a point.

Click here for GB team manager Hilda Gibson’s response.

Alan Wills was talking to BBC Sport’s Peter Scrivener.

Our accreditation may have changed to blue, the army of volunteers is significantly smaller and we seem to be the only TV crew in town BUT the buzz around the stables is the same as it was at the Olympics.

Here the best para dressage riders in the world have gathered for the biggest para dressage show on earth.

It’s great to be back amongst equestrian folk, chatting about Hanoverians and halts; tack to tests and lots of chitter chatter about who’ll bag the medals.

I’ve spent the last two days virtually stalking the British team. They have generously allowed us to film their training sessions and on Wednesday we took Lee Pearson and Ricky Balshaw down to the waterfront in Kowloon for a tour on camera.

It was one of the best days filming I’ve had. Lee and Ricky are great company and needless to say Lee was his usual entertaining self. He is also looking hot stuff in the arena.

Last night we watched the whole team practice their tests in the stadium under floodlights with the full GB kit on (including plaits) and Lee’s test was particularly impressive.

He has long made it known that his horse Gentleman is new to competing at the top level and the pair have had their ups and downs. On Wednesday morning Lee described them as being on the brink of “divorce proceedings” but later that night they looked magical.

Gentleman is a good-looking horse and if they perform like that on the day they’ll be hard to beat.

It’s also been great to get to know the riders. Simon Laurens has some hilarious stories about his superstitions including his hatred of the number three which is unfortunate since he’s a Grade 3 rider and therefore every competition number starts with that number for him.

He has had hypnosis to help him with it so fingers crossed it worked!

Debbie Criddle told me about her music choice for the Kur - expect some Wet, Wet, Wet!

I also finally had time to chat with Anne Dunham who is looking super-relaxed as always on Teddy. This is her fourth Paralympics. She’s won team gold at every one and sounds as determined as ever to do the same here.

Like every Paralympian I’ve met, Anne talked openly about her disability. She has multiple sclerosis and over the years has had to move down the grades in para dressage.

It sounds patronising to talk about bravery and I know none of the riders want sympathy but I have to say I find it inspiring hearing their stories of how they got to this level. Every one of the 72 riders from the 28 nations competing in para dressage here has a story of courage and how they overcame adversity.

They love this sport and they love their horses. Riding gives them the freedom to be just like everyone else. As Ricky Balshaw told me about his horse George: “He lends me his legs and we can take on the world.”

So to the action and I’m really looking forward to the start on Sunday morning. Like the Olympics, the para dressage is split into morning and evening sessions. It’s hard to know which will be best for our riders as the temperature and humidity doesn’t drop much in the evening.

I do, however, think it’s slightly cooler now than when I arrived at the beginning of August. Apparently the humidity will drop dramatically as September wears on but it’ll no doubt be too late for us.

What an incredible Olympics for our modern pentathlon team. Heather Fell and I were excited from the moment we set foot in the athletes’ village to the moment we left - and that moment came far too soon.

All five of our pentathlon events took place on one day, the last Friday of the Games, so we only had Saturday and Sunday to enjoy ourselves properly.

But the advantage of competing so late was that the more medals Team GB won, the less nervous I felt. It took the pressure off because suddenly nobody was looking to the final few events in desperation for medals.

Heather’s silver medal is a brilliant result for her, and for our sport.

We’ve had a great last two years now - qualifying two boys for Beijing beat our initial target of one, and a medal is what we had to produce from the girls’ point of view. My seventh place shows we’ve got strength in depth in the team.

I’m 90% pleased with my result. Seventh is a good result in pentathlon, especially at an Olympic Games, but I know my fencing was a bit below par and that was the difference between seventh and a place on the podium.

You’ve probably seen the disaster that was the men’s modern pentathlon show jumping. I was there and it wasn’t pretty to watch.

But it helped to take some of the stress out of the event for me - I thought that if it was going to be that bad for everyone, then maybe I could take advantage and move up from 20th into a medal position.

The organisers made some changes for the women’s event - for a start they took the worst horses out, and in the end I really got on with my horse. The other two girls who rode it didn’t have very good rounds at all, so I obviously rode it well and I’m pleased with that.

The conditions were much nicer, too. There was a lot of talk beforehand about heat and humidity but I didn’t notice any difference - we did our running event in the evening, and I’ve ridden horses in much stuffier conditions than that too.

Things will be a bit subdued next year without an Olympics, but I’m used to that - it’s what my sport is like, and it means I have to set my sights on London 2012. After my experience in Beijing I am so keen to compete there, but I know four years is a long time and I’ve got to train hard to stay in the mix.

It’s just a shame I didn’t get to see the Beijing shops but, to be honest, being around our gold medallists in the village was too exciting.

I met Chris Hoy, some of the rowers and Rebecca Adlington. Heather and I wanted our picture taken with everybody! Rebecca Adlington’s lovely, we got on with the rowers really well, and Chris Hoy even let me hold his medals to have my picture taken.

Being part of Team GB and mixing with athletes from other sports was a large part of what made the week so special.

I’m not sure what’s next for me now. I’m enjoying a rest at the minute, then it’s the last competition of the season, the World Cup final, in four weeks’ time.

But after the Olympics that’s not a huge priority, I’m just going to maintain my fitness and have a nice competition to end the season.

After that it’s winter training - but hopefully with a few parties thrown in along the way to finish this brilliant year off nicely!

Katy Livingston was speaking to BBC Sport’s Ollie Williams