大象传媒

When the Olympic victory parade took place in central London on Thursday, I rushed away from it and headed to the east of the capital where the Games will be staged.

With the greatest respect to Britain's successful Olympians and Paralympians, and to the rest of the country, my belief is that it is among the people of Newham where we will find out if the 2012 Olympics have been worth it or not.

The east London borough is the Olympic benchmark. This is one of the poorest parts of the country which has suffered with high unemployment for years.

It also has the notoriety of having residents who are bottom of the London's league in terms of sports participation - and second bottom in the whole of England.

After the excitement of the Beijing Paralympics, promises to surpass all expectations.

Although established athletes like , and will be at the forefront of ParalympicsGB's plans, the need to identify and bring through new talent is becoming more and more important as the Games approaches.

Increased funding is allowing initiatives like ParalympicsGB's programme, which aims to increase participation in disabled sport, to take on a new significance.

With the memories of Beijing still fresh, hopefuls filled out an online form over the last few weeks on the ParalympicsGB website and were invited along to east London's Mile End Leisure Centre earlier this week to try out 19 Paralympic sports.