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Q&A with David Roberts

David Roberts is one of the most successful Paralympic athletes Britain has ever produced. He has won eleven Paralympic Games Swimming Gold Medals since first appearing for Great Britain at Sydney 2000. One more Gold Medal at London 2012 would take him past the legendary Tanni Grey-Thompson in the all time list of British Paralympians.

Q&A with David Roberts

Q: Dave, how is the media’s coverage of Paralympic sport changing as we get closer to London 2012?

It’s getting much better. The Daily Telegraph is [doing] an article about me. It’s not just about sport, they are coming with me while I walk my dog in the countryside. They want to know who I am beyond Dave Roberts the swimmer. They want to know that I have a fiancé [Dave proposed to his long term partner Agata Jankowska on a holiday trip to New York in October 2010] and a career and a life beyond the pool. They’ll see that I have a normal life.

Q: Some of the feedback from other athletes is that the general public don’t really get how difficult Paralympic sport is until they try it. Any ideas on that?

Why not become Paralympians for the day? Get some people… in a pool and then give them blackout goggles and see what it’s really like to swim as a blind person. Get them to see how hard it is to have your senses taken away from you. Believe me it’s a terrifying. I swim and I know how many strokes it takes to get to the end of the pool, but even I find it very tough. Ask top Paralympians to come and do some coaching. Spend a day or two with them and see what it’s like to run with one leg, or on stilts.

Q: Is the pressure to perform increasing with the public recognition?

[Paralympic Marathon and 200m runner] Richard Whitehead and I are at completely different stages in our careers. He’s just starting and trying to win his first Paralympic Gold, I’ve got 11 Gold medals and need one more to beat Tanni Grey Thompson’s record. I’ve got the pressure of public expectation whereas he doesn’t have that pressure, and can go and enjoy it. Except then, if he wins a Gold, then the public expectation will rise and then it will be about how he deals with it.

Q: Do you have any doubt that you will beat Tanni’s record?

I will get one more medal to beat Tanni, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. Ellie Simmonds will get a medal. David Weir will get one. Richard Whitehead will.

London 2012 Olynpic Games

156 Days to go

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London 2012 Paralympic Games

>189 Days to go

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Did you know?

  • The London 2012 Paralympic Games will award 471 medal events for 20 Paralympic sports in 21 venues over 11 days of competition.
  • 8.8 million tickets will be available for the London 2012 Olympic Games, with another 2 million for the Paralympic Games.
  • 90% - proportion of material reclaimed from demolition within the Olympic Park which can be reused or recycled.
  • More than one million people will visit the Olympic Stadium for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.
  • There are 26 Olympic sports and 20 Paralympic sports in the London 2012 Games.
  • Our history with the Olympic Movement dates back to 1948 when Lloyds provided banking facilities to the 1948 Games, the last time they were held in London.
  • Following the London 1948 Olympic Games, Lloyds was given a 1948 Torch thought to have been donated by an employee who ran with it.
  • In 2012 up to 25,000 people could be transported to and from Stratford International Station each hour on the Javelin® train from St Pancras International station, in less than seven minutes.
  • For London 2012, rail links to the Olympic Park will have capacity to take more than 240,000 people to the Park every hour.
  • The Olympic Park is the size of 357 football pitches.
  • MUNICH 1972: Mark Spitz won seven gold medals and broke seven world records.
  • SEOUL 1988: South Korea turned democratic in order to welcome the world to the Summer Games.
  • MELBOURNE / STOCKHOLM 1956: To avoid the problem of quarantine for horses, the equestrian events took place in two different cities (Stockholm and Melbourne), and in two different seasons (June and November).
  • TOKYO 1964: The first Fair Play prize awarded to Lars Gunnar Kall and Stig Lennart Kall, who gave up their chances of winning the regatta to help two other competitors whose boat had sunk.
  • 76 – number of lifts in the Olympic Village to ensure the buildings are fully accessible.
  • LONDON 1908: The first time a relay was included in the athletics events.
  • 800,000 – the number of people expected to use public transport to travel to the London 2012 Games on the busiest day: about the same number as the combined population of Cardiff and Edinburgh.
  • PARIS 1900: The first woman to win an Olympic event was England's Charlotte Cooper, who won the tennis singles.
  • Ancient Olympics: The word gymnasium comes from the Greek root "gymnos" meaning nude (and yes, they did).
  • Around 900,000 items of sports equipment will be needed for the Olympic Games including 1424 FIFA-approved footballs, 1100 Badminton shuttlecocks and 65,000 towels.
  • The London 2012 Olympic Games will have 300 medal events for 26 Olympic Sports in 34 venues over 17 days of competition.
  • SYDNEY 2000: Korea (South Korea) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) marched together under the same flag.
  • ATHENS 2004: The marathon races followed the same route as the 1896 race, beginning in Marathon and ending in Athens' Panathenaic Stadium. Vanderlei de Lima (BRA) was in the lead with less than 7 kilometres to go when he was pushed off the course.
  • The London 2012 Olympic Games ticket application process is open from 15 March to 26 April 2011.
  • The London 2012 Olympic Stadium will have an 80,000 seat capacity.
  • If all London 2012 sports events were held on consecutive days, there would be 318 competition days for Olympic Games events and another 133 days for the Paralympic Games.
  • 53m – height of the Olympic Stadium: three metres taller than Nelson’s Column in London's Trafalgar Square.
  • 35m – height of the Basketball Arena, the same as London's Tate Modern and the Falkirk Wheel
  • BARCELONA 1992: In the women's 100m sprint Merlene Ottey (JAM) finished only six-hundredths of a second behind the winner, Gail Devers (USA), and yet she ended up in only fifth place.
  • 11 – number of residential blocks within the Olympic Village, each the size of a football pitch.
  • The dining room in the London Olympic Village will be the size of three football fields and seat 5,000. It will serve an estimated 100 tonnes of meat alone.
  • A ticket application process was announced by LOCOG as a way of ensuring a fairer process in order to make London 2012 everyone’s Games.
  • There are 700 rooms within the Olympic Stadium, including eight changing rooms and four prayer rooms.

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