After two compelling wheelchair races at the recent London Marathon, Paralympic sport comes alive in earnest this week in Manchester when the city hosts the fifth Paralympic World Cup.
The event, which is the largest international multi-sport event outside of the Paralympics, will see 174 medallists from Beijing competing in wheelchair basketball, swimming, track cycling and athletics.
It will be an excellent opportunity for the public to watch the British medallists and some new exciting talent in action, especially as we look forward to 2012, and in addition, many of the world's top names including South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit and amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius are competing.
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This week is show six - and, dare I say it, it is one that has real six appeal. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, arguably the biggest sporting couple on the planet will be on the show. Wow! I don't like using the word exclusive - but as exclusives go, it's as near to one as you're ever going to get.
Gabby has done the interview in Vegas - she filmed it with producer Jason on Wednesday, and having spoken to her, she says they were fantastic. As soon as the tapes have safely arrived back here in London, the team will be busy editing the 30 minute special - it's a case of all hands to the pump, as editing a 30-minute show in a 'documentary style' is not easy.
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From a talk delivered at the CCPR conference, 6 May 2009:
I want to concentrate today on two words: 'partnership' and 'focus'. Partnership is something you'll be hearing about a lot from the BBC, and I want to explain what it could mean around the Olympics and Sport; while focus is what I believe we increasingly need as broadcasters - and as a country and as a sports industry - to deliver the Olympics in the best possible way.
We start in the BBC from the principle that the licence fee is a unique privilege - bringing with it the responsibility to make every pound work for our audiences, and to support the wider creative industries. It's been independently estimated by PWC that the BBC adds £6.5 billion to the UK economy - nearly twice the value of the licence fee; and of that fully £5 billion is of benefit to the creative economy.
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