By Elizabeth Hudson BBC Sport in Athens

Adams hit out at Paralympic organisers over the scheduling

Imagine the scene at the Olympic Games.

Athletes are going through the warm-up for the final of the 100m sprint. The adrenalin is pumping ahead of one of the biggest events of the Games.

But instead of being the highlight of an evening session, it is early in the morning and the crowd in the stadium barely numbers a couple of hundred.

That was the case for some of the world's top male wheelchair racers at the Paralympics.

You had to be up early for the final of the men's T54 1500m - it got under way at 0905 Greek time (0705 BST)

The field was certainly a high calibre one.

Saul Mendoza from Mexico won this year's London Marathon, while Frenchman Joel Jeannot took the title last year in a course-record time.

But for some crazy reason, only a handful of people were at the stadium to see one of the biggest and most prestigious wheelchair races of the Paralympics.

The loudest noise came from a group of about 100 Greek schoolchildren sitting at the end of the back straight.

I race in front of bigger crowds at some regional events in Canada - this is the Paralympics and it shouldn't be like this Canadian wheelchair athlete Jeff Adams

And the athletes themselves were not impressed, especially as their semi-finals had taken place less than 12 hours earlier on Monday evening.

"To me it seems like the administrators are just slapping the athletes down for suggestions we made at a meeting at the Olympics and I, for one, don't respond well to being slapped down," said defending champion Jeff Adams of Canada, who finished fifth.

"To have a race like this buried on a Tuesday morning is just unacceptable. It is a showcase event and it should have a showcase crowd.

"I race in front of bigger crowds at some regional events in Canada but this is the Paralympics and it shouldn't be like this.

"I think it shows a lack of leadership and somebody has to be held responsible.

"We told the International Paralympic Committee of our concerns when we saw the schedules but we were told that the Greek organisers would not allow it to be changed, which seems absolutely ridiculous.

"The schedule for the athletics in Sydney was superb, which makes it so frustrating to have this. So why couldn't it be just replicated here?" added Adams, who is one of the sport's more outspoken characters.

On the track, in what proved to be another rough race, Mendoza was victorious in a time of three minutes 4.88 seconds, with silver going to Ernst van Dyk from South Africa, who also said that the sparse crowd was a disgrace.

"Crowds add so much flair to an event although, to me, winning a medal is more important," he said.

"The crowd we had for the heats on Sunday night [about 30,000] should have been the crowd for the final and it would have added so much to the sport."

BBC athletics analyst Tushar Patel, who himself has regularly raced against the finalists and was watching from the stand, said: "The Paralympics is what you train hard for.

"It is a tough race and has a big field and to have it at this time of day in front of so few people is just demoralising for an athlete."