Paralympic Athletes

It has been an amazing summer of sport for which the British people, and all the competitors, should be proud. There have been whoops, cheers and tears in almost every lounge in the land, as our athletes in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics shone. Last year, we were lucky enough to have been asked to take a promotional shot for the Paralympic Games and got the chance to meet and work with 3 of our Paralympic athletes in the pool.

Richard Whitehead (@marathonchamp) is an amazing character. He holds the records in the marathon and 200m (which you cannot say about Usain Bolt!) Richard stormed to the gold medal on Saturday in the 200m. He still has the 100m to come, but was not allowed to compete in the marathon event due to the Paralympic marathon rules.

Liz Johnson won gold in Beijing in 2008 in tragic circumstances, having just heard that her mother had died, days before she was to compete. She will swim again on Wednesday to try to retain her title. Liz was a dream to photograph in the pool, as she is so comfortable in the water.

Simon Munn is a Paralympic legend. This games is his 6th in the wheelchair basketball team. In order to get the image we wanted, we needed to sink a spare wheelchair to the bottom of the pool and also fill the basketball with water so that it would not keep floating to the surface.

We had a great team of assistants with us, providing essential medical backup, surface support and safety divers. Each diver had an athlete to look after underwater, to make sure they were comfortable and could breathe from scuba if required. To get all 3 athletes in the shot was a challenge, but we succeeded in the end.

It is not often that we get the chance to thank, in public, those that give us a hand at events like these. So Alex, Gareth, Andy and Tom - you made it happen - thanks! We did this shoot at the Manchester Aquatics Centre last year, and if you would like to see a short video on how we did it - then just click on this link to see the video that Alex made on the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK1snZMd-m0

Now the London Paralympics are half way through, we have had a lot of interest from the press. The Sun used an image of all 3 athletes as the front cover for their Paralympic Supplement.

It was a privilege to work with these three heroes. We wish them luck for the rest of these games and for all their endeavours in the future.