Athletes gather in London for International Paralympic Day

Paralympic athletes and London 2012 games organisers gathered in Trafalgar Square on Thursday to demonstrate their sports on International Paralympic Day. Tickets for the London Paralympic Games go on sale on Friday via special websites.Among those attending the Paralympics day was Oscar Pistorius, the South African who has been nicknamed Bladerunner and one of his closest rivals over 100 metres in the T44 class, Jerome Singleton of the USA -- the first man to beat him over the distance in seven years.Double amputee Pistorius this year became the first disabled athlete to compete at a world athletics championships. He said Paralympians were just as good athletes as able-bodied competitors and he is proud to be part of the movement. Singleton compared his rivalry with Pistorius to famous ones in other sports such as boxing and basketball.London Olympic organising committee chairman Lord Sebastian Coe predicted on Thursday that all two million tickets for the Paralympic Games from August 29-September 9 next year will be sold.The Paralympic movement began on the opening day of the 1948 London Olympics with the Stoke Mandeville Games for former servicemen and women with spinal cord injuries, named after their hospital.The first Paralympic Games for international athletes were staged in conjunction with the 1960 Rome Olympics and since the 1988 Seoul Games they have been staged in the same venue.