Accommodations
Athletes, escorts, and technical officials will be accommodated at the Paralympic Village, which is part of the Olympic Village and is located at Acharnes. Of its total rooms, 75% are designed to be accessible to persons with a disability, while common domain areas are 100% accessible.  Paralympic Family Members, National Chefs de Mission, official guests, and media representatives will be housed in central Athens hotels, which also have a high percentage of accessible rooms and common domain areas.

Getting Around
The Thermal Buses are providing 300 totally-accessible
buses, capable of transporting six wheelchairs each, to secure comfortable transport with ease for Paralympic Games athletes. Fixed rail transport is also accessible to persons with a disability, as are all Metro, Tram (ISAP), and Suburban Rail stations.

Tickets
Sales of Athens 2004 Paralympic Games tickets began on October 1st, 2003, for all Greeks and citizens of the European Economic Area and European Union. Ticket prices start from 5 Euros and go up to 50 Euros for the Opening Ceremony, for which numbers are limited. Sales are conducted through 140 selected Alpha Bank branches throughout Greece. Purchases may also be made on the official Ticketing Website at www.athens2004.com/tickets, where all the necessary information is published, and where tickets may be obtained using VISA credit cards.

Accessibility
Ensuring the best possible accessibility conditions has been a basic Athens 2004 priority. Aside from Paralympic Venues, which are totally-accessible, Athens 2004, in

cooperation with the Greek government, have worked to improve accessibility in public buildings, common domain, and archaeological spaces of Athens and the other Olympic Cities.

As part of its efforts, the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, in consultation with the Commercial and Industrial Chambers of Athens and Thessaloniki, and the Heraklio, Achaia, and Magnisia Chambers, has been implementing the ‘ERMIS – Accessible Choice’ program, intended to improve accessibility of shops and businesses. A guidebook containing the names of 1315 accessible businesses has already gone into circulation, and this text will also be available on the official Athens 2004 Website at www.athens2004.com.

Olympic Village  - Main Dining Room "Philoxenos"

Education
Significant emphasis has been placed on promoting the Athens Paralympic Games to the same degree as the preceding Olympic events. The ‘Adopt-a-sport’ program being implemented in Greece by the ATHENS 2004 organizers and the Ministry of Education is under the auspices of this effort and is intended to teach primary and middle school students throughout Greece about the sports of the Paralympic Games. At the same time, this program is helping shape a different attitude towards disability among young people.

For further information on various aspetcs of the Paralymic Games, visit www.athens2004.com and click on Paralympics.

Dressage Win Moves Pair Toward Athens

Paralympic Torch Enters Final Route
On September 9, the Paralympic Torch Relay will be lit for the ninth time in history – and this time, it will be in Athens. Its route will take it throughout Greece, passing through 54 municipalities and covering a distance of 410 km. Nearly 700 torchbearers will share its light and the values of strength, pursuit, and noble competition.

On September 17, the Paralympic Flame will offer its light to the Olympic Stadium in an Opening Ceremony that will inspire all as the world celebrates the first Paralympic Games in Greece.

The Athens 2004 Paralympic Torch Relay will bring its light to historical areas and monuments as well as sites with a distinctly modern Greek character. It promises to be an amazing tour through places of unique natural beauty, highlighting the accomplishments of today’s Greece.

The Paralympic Torch journey will begin from the heart of Athens, in the Thisseion area. On the first night, the

ATHENS 2004 Paralympic Games participants Evangelos Kontaxakis and Marianna Batsalia bring the torch home.

Paralympic Torch Relay will stop at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, one of the ancient monuments where cultural events still take place. The temples of Poseidon in Sounio and Artemis in Vravrona, and the great centers of the classical age, Megara and Elefsina, with their remarkable archaeological museums, will all welcome the Paralympic Flame which will also shine its light on the magnificent coastal route that runs towards Sounio and the dam of Marathonas.

On the morning of September 17, the Paralympic Flame will begin its journey towards the Olympic Stadium of Athens and its final destination: the opening of Athens 2004 Paralympic Games.

Young Wheeler Participates in Olympic Opening Ceremonies
Wheelchair racer Tatyana McFadden of Clarksville, MD, headed to Atlanta in early July to qualify for the Paralympics 800-meter semifinals. Her showing helped her score a post in the official international Olympics opening ceremonies in August. The 800m will be run as a demonstration sport during the Olympics in Athens, preceding the Paralympics by several weeks.

Tatyana, 15, is paralyzed from the waist down due to spina bifida. The youngest member of the track team, she already is the U.S. national wheelchair champ in the 100, 200, 400, and 800 meter categories. She has a personal best time of 56.9 in the 400, and regularly hits 2:20s in the 800. In early spring, she beat the Boston Marathon wheelchair champion to win the U.S. Paralympic 800-meter title in San Jose, Calif. And her winning time of 16.7 seconds in the 100-meter edged out the current world record of 16.8.

Adopted from a St. Petersburg, Russia, orphanage at the age of six, she spent the first years of her childhood scooting across the floor on her hands because of a lack of mobility equipment. Her adoptive mother, Debbie McFadden, is a former U.S. Commissioner on Disabilities who helped establish an adoption program between the U.S. and Russia for kids with disabilities. Shortly after bringing Tatyana home, Debbie enrolled the child in the Bennett Institute’s Physically Challenged Sports Program in Baltimore. While she learned English, Tatyana, a straight-A student, also took up track, basketball, swimming, table tennis, and ice hockey, winning national junior titles in numerous events.

Essays Earn Trips to Athens
An all-expenses paid trip to the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games is the prize for six student athletes with disabilities, together with their coaches, following judging of an essay contest by officials of the U.S. Paralympic Academy.

Theme of the contest was “What Ability Means to Me.” Coaches were chosen based on recommendations from peers, supervisors, and disabled children who had previously trained with the coaches. Each student/athlete and a coach was awarded an all-expenses trip for two and will be hosted for the first five days of the September 17-28 Paralympics. Financial support for the contest run by the Paralympic Academy was provided by Freightliner Sprinter, the official vehicle sponsor of the U.S. Paralympic Team/U.S. Paralympics. The Academy is an outreach program of the U.S. Paralympics and Freightliner Sprinter to encourage more children with disabilities to use sports as a means toward a healthy lifestyle.

National essay contest winners are: Zachary Bobowski, Blaze Sports Clubs of America, Georgia; Casandra Rightmyer, Lakeshore Foundation, Alabama; Ricky Eagan, National Ability Center, Utah; Kelsey Paul, National Sports Center for the Disabled, Colorado; Greta Rae Neimanas, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Illinois; and Kristin Knable, Kentucky. Coaches chosen are: Susan Oglesby, Blaze Sports; Jeannie Senter, Lakeshore; Jessica Wignall, National Ability Center; Daniel Humphreys, RIC; and Pamela Carey, Kentucky.