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Fiji Time: 6:17 PM on Tuesday 18 June

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The London Games by numbers

Afp
Tuesday, September 11, 2012

LONDON - London organisers promised the biggest, most high-profile Paralympic Games in the event's 52-year-history. As the Games drew to a close on Sunday, here is a breakdown of the event in numbers:

* A record 4,200 athletes competed in 503 events across 20 Paralympic sports. They claimed 1522 medals during 11 days of competition;

* 2.7 million tickets were sold, compared to 1.8 million for the last Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008;

* 422 Paralympic records were broken, of which 252 were world records;

* 164 countries were represented, several making their Paralympic debut, including reclusive North Korea;

* The workshop in the Paralympic Athletes' Village completed 2740 repairs on wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and orthoses (supporting devices) during the Games. They also fixed one team's paper shredder;

* There was no live coverage by NBC, the US Paralympics rights-ho­lder, sparking widespread criticism;

* More than 1.3 million tweets mentioning the word "Paralympics" were posted on social networking website Twitter during the Games;

* The London 2012 website was visited some 25 million times; and

* YouTube video of British table tennis player David Wetherill pulling off an extraordinary diving forehand against Germany's Thomasz Kusiak has been viewed more than five million times.