Paralympics are coming home

The Games bid has already given paralympic sports new impetus, the British Paralympic Association chief executive, Phil Lane, said. "The Paralympians will enthuse and inspire a new generation."

There will be 1.6 million tickets on sale for the London Paralympics, with the Olympic Park tennis centre in east London being specially built specially for the Paralympics. Eleven of the 20 other venues are within the Olympic Park.

The leading Paralympian Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, who was part of the London delegation in Singapore, said: "This is amazing. It is a huge day for the Paralympics. I don't think I've cried so much and I've seen a lot of old guys who I never thought I'd see cry get emotional."

Danny Crates, who won a gold medal in Athens, said: "We will do a Paralympics better than anyone else. Waiting for the result to be announced I was more nervous than any race I have been in before.

"When they announced that it was London, I got a massive adrenalin rush. It's absolutely brilliant."

The first Paralympic Games was organised by Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a neurologist working with Second World War veterans with spinal injuries at the specialist Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, who began using sport as part of his patients' rehabilitation. He arranged a competition with other hospitals to coincide with the London Olympics in 1948.