Special Olympics end in Shanghai

By Martin Conaghan in Shanghai

The chairman of Special Olympics, Tim Shriver, said the Shanghai Games would difficult to follow-up.

The Special Olympics World Summer Games have ended in Shanghai, with a low-key closing ceremony at the Jiangwan stadium.

Opera tenor Jose Carrera entertained the athletes as China handed the mantle over to Greece.

Athens, the spiritual home of sport and the birthplace of the modern Olympics, will now prepare to host the 2011 Special Games.

The Shanghai experience has been a success for a number of reasons, not least of all because it was the first time the Games had been held in Asia, but also because it was the first time China had attempted to host an event of this magnitude.

And, as hosts, they managed to stage a complex series of sporting competitions in fragmented locations in a vast city across a short space of time, often under difficult circumstances, but always with the same eagerness to impress and reassure their visitors.

It has also been a success for the British athlete contingent, many of whom will return home to families this weekend with extraordinary tales of a mesmerising city and its people, but also with the rewards of their often Herculean efforts.

When I set out on this trip, the most prominent message I picked up from onlookers was strongly against the notion of special athletes competing to win medals.

Heather Askew competed in the gymnastics for Team GB

However, as the days ticked past, I watched people with with the most unbelievable difficulties become heroes.

Ionutsa McLelland from Dingwall picked up silver in the swimming; David Fergus from Lothian joined her on the aquatics podium with a gold - and the men's and women's 11-a-side football teams both won their respective competitions, to name but a few.

In all, the British team will return home with 84 gold, 83 silver and 57 bronze.

As far as I'm concerned, their sporting achievements are as valid as those of their Olympic and Paralympic counterparts.

Their coaches, their friends, and their families should be rightly proud of them.

I know I am.

"We will have to do something different to try to reach the hearts and minds of people around the world." Tim Shriver

Before the opening ceremony, Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics movement, and son of its founder, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, told me that the 2007 Shanghai games would be the biggest ever, but that they probably could not be followed up.

"I don't think we will attempt to do anything this big again," said Shriver.

"We will have to do something different to try to reach the hearts and minds of people around the world."

I prefer to think of something his late uncle, President John F Kennedy said, when speaking about the human spirit and our continual drive to overcome adversity and mark our history with great achievements.

It sums up the Special Olympics and everything it stands for, perfectly:

"We do these things not because they are easy - but because they are hard."