Channel 4 has unveiled plans for its coverage of the London 2012 Paralympics and promised to make "household names" of the athletes.

The channel, which is the official Paralympics broadcaster, will show at least 150 hours of live coverage of the events. Julian Bellamy, Channel 4's acting chief creative officer, said: "We will make London 2012 Paralympics the most watched, the most talked-about Games ever.

Raising awareness

"There is a big job to do. Research we have done at Channel 4 since winning the bid shows that 84% of the British public couldn't name a single British Paralympian despite the fact that Great Britain came second in the medals table at the Beijing Paralympics with over 100 medals including 42 golds. So we are going to spend the next two years trying to radically change that lack of awareness." One of those athletes is the highly decorated dressage rider Lee Pearson MBE, who has won three gold medals at each of the last three Olympic games.

Starting on the August Bank Holiday, the channel will show a series of programmes designed to raise the profile of the Games in the run-up to 2012.

There will be an in-depth documentary, called Inside Incredible Athletes, which will follow individual Paralympian hopefuls including a blind footballer, wheelchair rugby players and disabled sprinters and swimmers.

There will also be a 10-week magazine programme called That Paralympic Show, presented by Rick Edwards and wheelchair basketball medallist Ade Adepitan.
Adepitan said the channel's "edgy and fearless" approach "will turn our Paralympians into household names".

Dedicated website

The channel's special website goes live this month and will feature blogs, live video streaming of events, and links to social networking sites including Twitter to boost the profile of the Games.

The channel's head of creative diversity Stuart Cosgrove said the overall campaign would show Paralympians as "supremely and singularly talented sportspeople who are set apart from the rest of us not by their disability but by their staggering athletic ability and their dedication and will to win".

This is the first time Channel 4 will have shown the Games. It was announced in January it had scooped the BBC, which has covered Paralympic sport since the 1980 Games, to the broadcast rights in a tendering process.