The organisers of next month’s World Para Athletics Championships in London are urging the public http://www.ramsofficialsonline.com/Deacon_Jones_Jersey_Cheap to embrace Paralympic sport again amid fears that many sessions will be less than a third full. So far 230,000 tickets have been sold – an average of more than 14,000 tickets for the 16 sessions. That is far better than any previous Para Athletics Championships but with the London Stadium holding 56,000 seats, organisers need a late rush of sales to avoid large blocks of empty seats. Speaking at the launch of the Fill the Stadium campaign, Ed Warner, the co-chair of London 2017, insisted there is still time to capture the public’s attention in the same way the 2012 Paralympics were able to. “Every time we put more tickets on sale for the IAAF world championships in August they go like hotcakes because people get that it is Usain Bolt’s last run and Mo Farah’s last track race,” he said. “But raising the profile of our Paralympians is more of a challenge because no one has ever paid to go and watch a Para Athletics world championships before. We already have 230,000 people doing that, which is great as typically the event gets just a smattering of people, but the more people we can have in there the happier we will be.” Organisers have also sold 100,000 tickets to 1,000 schools but are hoping that prices starting at ￡10 for adults and ￡5 for children, and a campaign backed by celebrities, politicians and the royal family will raise the event’s profile. “I don’t want to get to the end of these championships and hear people say: ‘That was fantastic – if only I had known I could go,’” Warner E.J. Gaines Youth Jersey added. “So we want to publicise it as much as we can and give people the chance to embrace disability sport. We are talking elite athletics with people overcoming huge and significant handicaps. At the Paralympics in London in 2012 we all saw how people related to athletes such as Jonnie Peacock and Hannah Cockroft and we are hoping it happens again.” Advertisement Warner also believes the event can put a smile on the nation’s face after a number of awful events in the past few months. “The nation needs a fillip as we have been through some terrible times in recent weeks in all sorts of different ways,” he said. “So here’s a chance to be uplifted by seeing extraordinary sport undertaken by extraordinary people – many of them British, many of them winning British medals.” Warner confirmed that organisers have taken a number of heightened security initiatives following the three terrorist attacks in London this year but said the message he wanted to get across is “to be aware but don’t be afraid”.
“It goes all the way back from messages we had from politicians from all sides when we had the terror attacks to go about your business and not be cowered by this,” he added. “We are working with all the relevant experts, who are fantastic. We are not complacent about it but we have invested a lot of time and effort into security with people who really know what they are doingWidnes’s impressive midsummer renaissance may come too late to prevent them spending the tail-end of this season in the Qualifiers, but it will certainly give them hope that if their destiny is a relegation battle in the so-called “middle eight” they Chris Conner Jersey could well have enough to get out of trouble. Warrington fight to stay in Super League a year after contesting the Grand Final Read more This mini-revival from Denis Betts’s side, which has seen them win three of their last four games, has the makings of a real late-season surge up the Super League table, and the top eight is still not beyond their reach. Widnes, the surprise package of last season, looked certainties for the bottom four after winning just two of their first 15 games up until a month ago. However, as the key players have begun to return from injury, the Vikings’ form has gradually improved. Betts said: “You can beat yourself up with where you should be, but wherever we end up, we want to be there playing well.” His side had forged a comfortable 20-0 lead by the interval courtesy of four first-half tries and despite a comeback from Leigh in the second half, Widnes were able to move off the bottom of the table and narrow the gap on eighth-placed Wigan to five points. Leigh’s first season back in Super League has been one of struggle, and the Centurions now find themselves at the bottom with four games remaining. Avoiding the Qualifiers looks an increasingly unlikely proposition for Neil Jukes’s side – and here they were left to rue a dismal start from which they never recovered. “It’s as bad a 40 minutes as I’ve been involved in,” Jukes said of the first-half performance. “We looked like we’d never kicked a ball and never made a tackle before. It’s so frustrating.” Tries from Chris Bridge, Corey Thompson http://www.officialoriolestore.com/Eddie_Murray_Jersey and two from the evergreen forward Chris Houston put Widnes firmly in control at half-time. Nick Rawsthorne and Atelea Vea sparked hope of a revival for the Centurions but that was soon quelled in a moment which summed up the chastening experiences of their first season back in Super League. Pressing for more points, a loose pass from Ryan Hampshire was ruthlessly picked off by Thompson, who raced away unchallenged for his second, before the young winger, Ryan Ince, and Matt Whitley scored further tries to keep Widnes’s belief of the most unlikely of great escapes alive
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