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There is a scene in the comedy film _The Other Guys_ where Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg's characters have an extended argument about who would win a fight between a lion and a tuna.

"You find yourself in the ocean," Ferrell warns, "a 20ft wave, I'm assuming it's off the coast of South Africa, coming up against a full-grown, 800lb tuna with his

20 or 30 friends. You lose that battle. You lose that battle nine times out of 10." You get the gist. That was me at the start of the 2012 Paralympics, on which I would be reporting. I

sat in the gorgeous Aquatic Centre and watched the athletes file out one by one to their stations: the guy with one leg, another with no arms (key, in my experience, for swimming

backstroke), someone else rolling on in a wheelchair and taking his place alongside a competitor with no immediately obvious impairment. So I scanned the line and made a mental wager over

who would prevail. Invariably I'd have lost my stake. Everything changed when Ellie Simmonds raced America's Victoria Arlen in the S6 400m freestyle on the first Saturday evening.

There's a special feeling when you are watching great sport: it convulses through your body in unpredictable, sometimes disturbing ways. You make noises that you didn't realise you

had inside you. Immediately afterwards, I wrote that their encounter reminded me of defining clashes between Ali and Frazier, Borg and McEnroe. I woke up the next morning and wondered if I

might have been carried away, but the fog has cleared and I stand by it. Until this point, I hadn't _got_ Simmonds. She had a couple of gold medals, but there were British Paralympians

who had won 16 and we didn't care about them. There were plenty of our athletes who had a more captivating "story" than she had. She was a lovely, modest, warm person, but

again that did not make her unique in these Games. What I had not appreciated was that she had that instinctive flair for drama that all great sportspeople possess. In person she is

completely irresistible. She could be an overwhelming favourite to win a race and it would still be a shock when she came first. As Graham Gooch famously said to Ian Botham on one of his

comebacks: "Who writes your scripts?" Oscar Pistorius has that rare charisma too, but this was not an entirely auspicious Games for South Africa's Blade Runner. He won medals,

broke world records, but crucially he "damaged the brand", in the words of Alastair Campbell. Simmonds represents what we expect from Paralympians: wholesome, gracious,

pleased-to-get-bronze on the rare occasions that she doesn't spank her rivals. When Pistorius huffed, sniped and flounced after being overhauled by Brazil's Alan Oliveira in the

T44 200m, he burst a bubble and gave a glimpse of the future: maybe these athletes were just as vain and petulant as other sports stars? While few were prepared to defend Pistorius, his

outburst was actually a welcome sign of the Paralympics growing up. There was an edge to these Games that we have never seen before and that perfectly dovetails with the message that we

should concentrate on the ability, not the disability, of the competitors. They don't expect or want any allowances. Pistorius was judged exactly the same way as, say, Wayne Rooney

would have been for making a similar outburst. This represents epic and unexpected progress. There is an unseemly side to this maturity, too: many of us were introduced to

"boosting" at this Paralympics, where competitors with spinal injuries might strangle their testicles or sit on a drawing pin to raise their blood pressure and improve

performances. Two Russian powerlifters were suspended for taking human growth hormone and a Georgian tested positive for steroids. More scandals, technological bitching and classification

irregularities will surely follow as the prizes and recognition become bigger. We can certainly no longer talk patronisingly about Paralympic athletes who are just happy to be taking part.

British cyclist Jody Cundy, the world record-holder and unbeaten in six years, expressed this emotion with particular eloquence when he was disqualified from the C4/5 1km time trial.

"I've wasted four fucking years of my fucking life," he squealed, hobbling around on his prosthetic racing leg. "Do you know what it's like to dedicate four years of

your life? I can't even express it. There aren't the fucking words." Try telling Cundy, who was born with a deformed foot that was amputated when he was three, that it was a 

success just to reach the start line and let us know how many f-bombs you get. Simmonds and Pistorius were pretty much household names going into the event; they will now be joined by Jonnie

Peacock, Sarah Storey, Hannah Cockcroft and David Weir, all of whom made an indelible mark on the national psyche. But it would be myopic just to focus on British success, and crowds at the

Olympic Park showed no inclination to do so. On the night when Mickey Bushell powered to gold in the T53 100m, I thought I would never hear a louder cheer. Then 80,000 people turned as one

to a small corner of the infield where the F42 high jump was taking place for single-leg amputees. Competitors would reach their mark, drop their crutches, bounce a couple of times on their

standing leg and then hurl themselves over a bar roughly the height of your garden hedge. After an almighty ding-dong, with personal bests obliterated, the Fijian beat the Indian and the

crowd feted the competitors like they were the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Sometimes it felt like the spectators would get behind anyone. Then George Osborne took the stage to make a medal

presentation in the Olympic Stadium. That dark underbelly again. Now, here's the thing: every second you were at the Paralympics you felt like you were ensconced in a parallel Britain

that was more tolerant, accepting, joyous, even free of litter. That is what made the booing of Osborne so powerful. He couldn't dismiss it as a wild-eyed fringe or a coordinated

assault (the reaction was spontaneous, the moment his doughy face appeared on the big screen). It must almost have felt like his conscience talking to him. Will the Paralympics have an

effect on the policies of the Coalition? Don't bet on it. But for the millions of people who have marvelled at some aspect of the Games, it will have exploded and refashioned their view

of disability. Now that's a legacy.