Today marks the official opening of the Special Olympics National Games in Limerick. The movement has been buoyed by waves of positive support in recent days weeks and months as the build up to three days of competition became more intense.
The torch will be lit this evening after the completion of the law enforcement torch run which brought together an Garda Siochana and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
International sporting stars including Paul O’Connell and Seamus Coleman have stepped across their own touchlines to lend real and positive support to the games, revealing personal insight at the same time into how their own families have been touched by intellectual disability.
From a business perspective Eircom have now been involved with the sport and the movement for 29 years and the positive way in which it impacts internally and externally on the company has been as evident this year as it undoubtedly was in the first flush of enthusiasm back in 1985.
Athletes
In total some 1,500 athletes will gather to compete at venues across the South West but centred on the University of Limerick Sports Campus.
3,000 volunteers will ably assist in everything from setting up facilities, to pouring cups of tea and cutting ham sandwiches.
It has been a massive boost for Limerick, for it’s own sense of self worth and has shown again the power that sport has to bring people together and do something that makes a real difference in people’s lives.
At the highest level of elite sport it is said by some that winning is the only thing that matters. In the World Cup in Brazil starting at the same time, the amounts of money, the level of global interest and everything about it will be on a scale that completely overwhelms the Special Olympics.
Impact
In every sense that is apart from the impact it will have on the people who compete, who watch, who have played some small part in getting the event to where it is today.
Good luck to all of them, to all of you. Enjoy the Games, celebrate the success of having put them on and capture as much of what happens as you possibly can so that it will serve as a powerful reminder of what you can achieve long after the flags have been furled and life returns to normal, just a little better than it was before.
Special Olympians
