Revealed: Scandal of the Paralympic empty coffers
JUST a fortnight before the Rio 2016 Olympics came the shock news that there was no money left for the Paralympic Games to go ahead.
Rio Paralympics 2016 opening ceremony highlights
It left precious little time for the ruling body, the International Paralympics Committee, to find the money themselves.
The scandal of the empty coffers is revealed by committee president Sir Philip Craven on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs this morning.
He told how Olympics organising committee chief executive Sydney Levy phoned his Paralympic counterpart to say: “There’s not a lot of money in our bank account and we’re pretty certain that’s going to be used for the Olympics. There will be nothing left for the Paralympics.”
Sir Philip Craven and Rio 2016 Olympic rings
Sir Philip added: “And that’s how it was. So we had to get to work.”
There’s not a lot of money in our bank account and we’re pretty certain that’s going to be used for the Olympics. There will be nothing left for the Paralympics
They found new money from the acting federal government and also from the host city, Rio de Janeiro.
In the end the games went ahead as planned, enabling Sarah Storey to win the individual pursuit cycling final to become Britain’s most successful ever female Paralympian.
That was not the only controversy over the event. In August the Paralympic Committee banned Russia from taking part for allegedly violating anti-doping rules.
Sarah Storey is Britain’s most successful ever female Paralympian
At the time, Sir Philip said “their medals-over-morals mentality disgusts me” and he still stands by that.
Sir Philip, who was paralysed from the waist down after an accident when he was 16 years old, told host Kirsty Young: “If we don’t take firm action when state sponsored doping is proven, then we are going to be in trouble.”