The first day of the Paralympic Games is over and we’re thrilled to bring you the very first Royal Mail gold medal stamp in honour of our first Paralympian gold medal winner, Sarah Storey.
Sadly there are some parts of the Paralympic much of the country has complained about – Channel4’s coverage. Cutting to adverts during the Athletes Parade at the opening ceremony and lack of coverage of many events such as today’s dressage haven’t bought them much good will. Channel4 naturally claim they have to make money with adverts, but cutting away and failing to show every country’s athletes just isn’t on, neither is medal chasing broadcasts instead of providing the opportunity for us to watch every event.
Whilst the coverage is questionable one thing isn’t, the athletes are superb! I was amazed at swimmers with no arms winning medals and the wheelchair basketball is so much better then the Olympic equivalent. With a haul of 2 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals our UK athletes have done us proud on the first day of the games.
Sarah Storey Women’s C5 Cycling 3,000m Individual Pursuit
In a global first Royal Mail, in response to public demand, are the first postal administration to celebrate home nation Paralympic gold medalists on stamps and Sarah is a fantastic winner carrying on in the Velodrome where our Olympic team left off. In the women’s C5 3,000m individual pursuit Sarah smashed her own world record in the heats and then went on in the final to literally chase Anna Harkowska down. With under two thirds of the race distance cycled she closed the half lap starting gap and breezed past Anna to the sound of a pistol shot showing the pursuit was won!
As well as the gold medal stamp Sarah will also be honoured by Royal Mail with a post box being painted gold in her home town of Disley. If you want to see her pillar box being transformed from red to gold pop along to post box outside The White Lion Pub, Buxton Road, Disley, SK12 2HA at around 10am on Friday!
Jonathan Fox Men’s 100m S7 Backstroke
Our second Paralympics gold medal win came swimming in at the Aquatics center, courtesy of Jonathan Fox in the men’s 100m S7 Backstroke. His 1m 10.46s time was only just outside the world record of 1m 09.86s, but then he set that record in this morning’s heats!
Royal Mail will be painting Jonathan’s post box gold in his home town and you can find it outside The Cooperative, Fore Street, Saint Stephen, Cornwall PL26 7NN. Again the painting is scheduled to start at 10am on Friday.
We’ll bring you an image of Jonathan’s gold medal stamp as soon as it’s available.
4 Responses
If you are looking for Paralympics coverage try(the Sky numbers) Channels 450,451,452 or 453 etc for HD. I find the coverage to be excellent on these channels.