Cécifoot Pékin 2008

"Solidarity supporters"

The Paralympic flame has been lit!

For four years now, ever since the previous Games in Athens, thousands of athletes world-wide have been preparing to meet and confront each other. They have come, determined to win. They enter the great sports arena in the wake of other so called “valid” athletes.

The Paralympic games were created in response to an injustice: to offer mentally, physically or sensorially handicapped athletes the possibility to show the world that they too are all round athletes.

In the ring of the “Bird’s Nest”, the Games’ great stadium, they share their joy with the world, they share the Olympic values, their wish to go faster, to reach higher, to be stronger.

Besides competing they send a message to mankind asking it to look at things in a new way. The world in not made up of “valids” and “invalids”, of “handicapped” or “normal” people. The universe is filled with men and women who seek to be more, to go beyond themselves and to create a better world.

The teams that will follow each other into the Olympic stadium are links in a chain that is being built: the same chain that joins the athletes of five continents.

We invite you, during the entire length of these two weeks, to enter into the world of 5-a-side football, to have yourself swept away by the emotions of SPORTS and by the unsuspected performances of MAN.