The 2011 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Swimming European Championships came to a close on Sunday after an excellent week of competition in Berlin, Germany.

It was our largest European Championships on many levels.

More than 440 swimmers from 36 countries took part, the most ever, and with more than 90 accredited media in attendance it is clear to see that as we edge closer to London 2012 the media's interest in Paralympic Sport is continuing to grow.

As always the stars of the show were the swimmers. In total 59 European records were broken, 31 of which were world records.


Although Ukraine, Great Britain and Spain led the medal table what was most pleasing for me was that 31 out of 36 countries won at least one medal in the German capital.

This, I believe, underlines the breadth of swimming talent that we now have across Europe and bodes well for the strength of the sport in future years.

Another pleasing aspect of last week's event was the fact that every single minute of it was broadcast live via www.youtube.com/paralympicsporttv giving billions of people around the world the opportunity to tune in on either their computer or mobile phone.

Judging by the number of tweets we had at @paralympic, the IPC's official twitter account, people all over the world were tuning in. Aside from thousands of tweets from people in Europe, we had supporters from Australia, United States, Japan, Mauritius, Brazil and Canada, amongst others, contacting us to say they were enjoying the action.

Hopefully those who saw the action will now have a taste for more Paralympic swimming.

They don't have long to wait!

I expect the swimming events at next year's Paralympic Games to be one of the must have tickets for London 2012 when they go on-sale on September 9 this year.

Therefore, I'd encourage people to join the one million others who have already signed up for Paralympic Games tickets at www.tickets.london2012.com so that they do not miss out.

Xavier Gonzalez is the chief executive of the International Paralympic Committee