As he had with the two Olympic ceremonies and the Paralympic opening, film director Zhang Yimou crafted a fourth distinctive and powerful show on the final night of these games. He had spoken of his desire to build "four ceremonies out of an organic whole," and this ceremony's theme touched on the paper and document themes touched on in the Opening Ceremony on 8/8/08, which now seems a lifetime ago.

The Paralympics' closing, like their opening 11 days ago, was preceded by the athletes' parade, a rare gesture that allowed them to watch the artistic portion, titled "A Letter to the Future." Millions of petals floated down from the Bird's Nest. And, as should have been expected, there were miles and miles of beautiful fireworks. The ceremony can be viewed in its entirety at this link, and many great wire service pictures can be seen at the New York Times website.

Even if you didn't follow a second of the wheelchair basketball tournament, there's no misunderstanding the power of this storyline. Canada came in as the world's best team, winning gold medals in 2000 and 2004 and crushing all opposition. But plucky Australia, which had a rough start to the tournament in beating Brazil 73-72, ended up winning the opposite Group B, and methodically did away with Japan and Great Britain on its way to the gold medal game. Once there, they shocked the Canadians with a 72-60 win, their first title since 1996. Because every Australian national team is required (by law?) to have a nickname, these guys go by the name "the Rollers."

Today is the final day of the 2008 Paralympic Games. With 465 medal events complete, all that's left to do is wrap up the five-a-side football tourney (in which China and Brazil will square off) and fencing, and end the track meet at the Bird's Nest. As in the Olympics, the marathon closes the show, but here there are four separate marathons -- for blind and wheelchair athletes.

And then, the closing ceremony, which will take place tonight.

RUGBY: Australia only had one upset in them on Day 10. The United States, dominant in this sport but still stinging from an upset in the 2004 semis, rolled over the Aussies by a 53-44 score in the wheelchair rugby final. The other "redeem team" clung to a three-goal lead in the third quarter, but put the hammer down in the final eight-minute period.

After the game, co-captain Brian Kirkland (who had trouble containing his excitement in the final moments) talked about the accomplishment and the sport's growing profile.

"I've been playing this sport for 17 years, and it used to be that people had no idea what I did," he said. "But most definitely more and more people have become aware of it in the last few years. And these Paralympics in Beijing have done a lot for disabled sports in general, no question."

Wheelchair rugby is a four-on-four sport designed for quadriplegics. It's a wince-inducing, teeth-grinding sport to watch -- all the repeated metal-on-metal scrapes and collisions with the specially-designed wheelchairs that look like they have Roman shields attached to the wheels.

The United States team, profiled in the aptly-titled documentary Murderball, escaped the same fate that gave that movie an unhappy ending. In Athens 2004, a semifinal loss sent them to bronze. On Monday, the U.S. murderballers edged Great Britain in the 2008 semis with a 35-32 win (above). They'll face Australia in the final.

Goalball is a three-a-side version of handball for blind athletes, and makes use of a ball with bells inside so that competitors can judge its position. Much like five-a-side football, players with partial sight are outfitted with blindfolds to ensure an even match.

Yesterday, the United States claimed the title in the women's tournament, overcoming hosts China (including Chen Fengqing and Wang Ruixue, above) by a 6-5 count in sudden death. The final was surprising for the lack of Canada's presence, a team which had won the previous two Paralympic championships but lost in the semis 1-0 to China. On the men's side, the home team was far more fortunate, beating favored Lithuania in a come-from-behind 9-8 win.

After eight days of Paralympic competition, 377 events have been completed with 1,146 total medals awarded. Monday will see finals in athletics, powerlifting, table tennis, basketball and fencing. It's also the final day for tennis, archery, shooting and the swim meet. There are three days left until the Closing Ceremony.

With seven days in the books, 322 events have been completed -- that's already more than the 2008 Olympics registered, and there are four days left in the Paralympics. The 1000th medal from this event will be awarded sometime today. Sunday will be the busiest day of the games, with medal events in archery, athletics, cycling, powerlifting, swimming, volleyball, fencing and tennis. It's also the gold medal game in men's goalball, which will put the underdog United States, which came out of a No. 8 seed to reach the final, against hosts China.

ATHLETICS: A little under a month since Jamaican Usain Bolt streaked to a sprint double at the Olympics, Oscar Pistorius of South Africa (above) performed the same feat at the Paralympics. The "Blade Runner" took the T44 200m race in 21.67 seconds, and will compete in the 400m, which is his strongest event. He missed the Olympic A standard by .7 seconds in July. Here's a video of Pistorius in action against able-bodied runners at a Golden League event last summer.

Paralympic sitting volleyball, a game which dates back to the Netherlands in the 1950's, is a fast-paced game designed for amputee and polio-stricken athletes. It's played with a meter-high net, and quick hands are an absolute necessity. Above, a moment from a classification match between Latvia and Ukraine in the women's tournament, in the first round of the fifth through eighth place pool. The Ukranian side won in straight sets.

A total of 272 events have been completed, with 831 medals awarded. On Day 6, podiums will be set out for athletics, cycling, shooting and swimming. It's also the last day of the boccia tournament, a gentle game of balls and jacks that may seem out of place with all the physicality going on in Beijing.

Five-a-side Paralympic association football is a game specifically for athletes with sight impairments. Those with partial sight may compete too, so long as they wear blindfolds to ensure an even playing field. Above, Brazilians Marcos Felipe and Damiao Ramos make an appeal to the ref in their match against Spain. Brazil won 1-0, and has not conceded a goal in its first two matches.

As of Day 5, 231 events have been completed, with 708 medals awarded. Today's action will feature finals in athletics, equestrian, powerlifting, rowing, shooting, swimming and table tennis.

POWERLIFTING: Whether in the Olympics, Paralympics or on the planet Glerbtron, people who compete by lifting heavy objects are going to take performance-enhancing drugs. That much is evident after the second major doping scandal of these games, in which two more powerlifters have been expelled from the Athlete's Village and given two-year bans. Facourou Sissoko from Mali, and the Ukraine's Liudmyla Osmanova both failed tests for boldenone metabolite and 19-norandrosterone, respectively, on the day of the opening ceremony. Both are anabolic steroids.

Three days are in the books -- 129 events have been completed, with 397 medals awarded. With Day 4 just starting, medal events will take place today in athletics, cycling, equestrian, powerlifting, shooting, swimming and table tennis.

ATHLETICS: Oscar Pistorius, also known as the "Blade Runner," wasn't able to make the 400m qualifying time for the Olympics and had run-ins with the world track body that turned ugly in the runup to Beijing. But at at the Paralympics, he's been dominant. He won the 100m championship in the T44 class in 11.17 seconds, a performance that wowed visiting journalists. The double-amputee has two more races to go in the next few days, the 200m and the 400m.

After Day 2 of the 2008 Paralympics, 68 events have been completed, and 213 medals awarded. On Day 3, championships in athletics, boccia, cycling, equestrian, judo, swimming and shooting will be decided.

SHOOTING: After winning eight gold medals last month, American swimmer Michael Phelps has won 14 golds in total -- the most of any Olympian. Yesterday, Jonas Jacobsson of Sweden won his 14th Paralympic gold medal, in the SH1 men's 10m air rifle. The 43-year-old has been collecting medals since his first Paralympics in 1980, and won four championships each at Sydney and Athens. In his first of four Beijing events, he smashed the world record with a 697.4 point performance, eclipsing the old mark by 3.4.

SWIMMING: More world records yesterday in the fastest pool on earth -- nine in total. Andre Brasil, who happens to come from the same country as his last name, finished the men's 100m butterfly for S10 competitors in 56.47 to begin Day 2's competition. In the final event of the day, South Africa's Natalie du Toit won her second gold in as many days by taking the women's S9 100m freestyle (1:01.44).

The first day of the Paralympics saw medals awarded in cycling, judo, shooting and swimming. Day 2 will feature the beginning of athletics, the first round of 7-a-side football, sailing preliminaries, and wheelchair tennis. Universal Sports will play highlight reels at 1 & 2 4 a.m. & 12 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, which will be available online.

SHOOTING: Wheelchair-bound Veronika Vadovicova of Slovakia scored 494.8 points in the R2-SH1 standing air rifle competition, therefore becoming the first gold medalist of the 2008 Paralympics. There are two classifications in para-sport in shooting: SH1 (events in which the shootists can bear the weight of the guns) and SH2 (events for competitors don't have the ability to hold up the weapon, and require a shooting stand). There is an SH3 class for visually impaired shooters, but it is not contested at the Paralympics.

CYCLING: Just like Great Britain's Olympic cyclists a month ago, the nation's Paralympic entries are cleaning up at the Laoshan Velodrome, wearing out that venue's poor CD of "God Save the Queen." Three golds total for Great Britain so far there, and Simon Richardson, Aileen McGlynn and Darren Kenny all set world records in cycling's first day. Kenny won the CP3/4 individual pursuit, Richardson took the LC3/4 time trial, and McGlynn and Hunter won the B&VI 1km women's time trial.

Paralympic cyclists are separated into three classes with subdivisions, B&VI (blind/vision impaired), LC (locomotor disability), CP (cerebral palsy) and HC. The latter is a handcycling class for athletes who have lost use of their lower limbs.

SWIMMING: In swimming, Paralympic classes are based on the severity of disability. Events are classified S1 to S10 with S1 being most severe, with S11-S13 reserved for athletes with sight deficiencies (S13 is for legally blind swimmers). For races, a second letter is sometimes added to define which swimming discipline is being contested: B for breaststroke and M for medley.

Not only did legendary Chinese film director Zhang Yimou orchestrate the two Olympic bookends, he's been spending the last two weeks making sure the Paralympic Opening Ceremony was perfect as well.

There were familiar things, like the 10-second countdown done in fireworks. But instead of the Parade of Nations following the artistic portion, the athletes marched in first, so they could watch the proceedings from the two ends. Pop star Andy Lau performed the official song of both the Paralympics and the modern Communist party, "Everyone is No. 1." The emotional highlight was an airborne dance by 12-year old Li Yuan, who lost her leg in the Sichuan earthquake.

In a departure from the solemn and powerful Olympic ceremonies, there were these odd numbered imps, pictured above. Two thousand children made outlines of animals on the stadium floor and the audience was prompted to make the proper duck, frog and seagull noises. The Closing Ceremony two weeks ago could have used a little more of those elements.

The torch lighting -- an event made memorable a month ago by Los Angeles 1984 star Li Ning's skywalk around the rim of the stadium -- was much more vertical than horizontal. Wheelchair athlete Hou Bin, a high jump champion at the past three Paralympics, pulled himself up with a rope (right) to the bottom tip of the cauldron before lighting it with the torch. It's nice to see the flame lit again.

The spectacle unfolded in front of another packed Bird's Nest, and there was little profit involved. The Chinese government offered free T-shirts, baseball caps, bottled water, lunch boxes and cash to attendees.

As would be expected, much of the sporting world -- specifically the United States of America -- has cured its own Olympic fever and is back to football. The Paralympic Opening Ceremony was not shown on U.S. television, but can be viewed online on Universal Sports' website. One can also watch competitions on YouTube, free of the usual Olympic restrictions.

(Photo credit: AP)

The Paralympics' roots lie in the initial Stoke-Mandeville Games of 1948, a multi-sport event for British World War II veterans that began the day before the London Opening Ceremony. The event went international four years later, as Dutch athletes joined Great Britain at the same location in 1952. The Olympic Movement added a "parallel" event for disabled athletes at Rome 1960 -- it's important to note that the Paralympics name is not derived from "parapalegic" or "paralysis."

A winter gathering was added in 1976, but was not held in the same city as the Winter Olympic Games until Albertville 1992. The summer games have only been tied to the Olympic host city since 1988 -- they have been held in entirely separate countries throughout their history, i.e. Tel Aviv, Israel in 1968 (Mexico City), Arnhem, Netherlands in 1980 (Moscow), and a joint 1984 hosting by New York and the original home of the Stoke-Mandeville Games in England (Los Angeles).

The summer event has grown from 400 athletes 48 years ago to over 4,800 from 148 nations who will compete in the XIII Summer Paralympic Games, which begin on Saturday in Beijing. Events in twenty disciplines will be held over 12 days, and this blog will post daily updates with pictures.

Here are some other recent updates from around the Olympics:

EQUESTRIAN: This week, it was revealed that a sixth horse (in addition to the four caught for painkillers during the Games) tested positive for an IOC-banned drug. Rufus, the mount of Brazil's Rodrigo Pessoa, was found to have ingested nonivamide, a organic pain-relieving substance similar to the compound found in the first four horses. Rufus finished fifth in the show jumping at Hong Kong last month. Last week, American Courtney King's Mythilus (felbiniac) was the fifth horse to test positive. The horse-doping scandal will likely result in Norway losing its team-jumping bronze.

ATHLETICS: Speaking of drugs, the Greek Olympic team had severe image problems with 11 weightlifting positives in April, then lost Athens 2004's 400 meter champion Fani Halkia with a pre-competition test. Experts claim that Greece took part in organized doping with its 15 total test failures, trying to sneak previously unrecorded anabolic methyltrienolone past the IOC. The IOC, for their part, have sued Greek track coach Alexandros Lykourezos.

Happily, the post-Games news isn't all drug-related. On Tuesday, Jamaica's Usain Bolt -- now the world record-holder in both the 100m (9.69) and 200m (19.30) -- ran a 19.63 200 meter dash at the Athletissima Grand Prix meet, held in the Olympic Movement's home city of Lausanne, Switzerland. That's .03 under Michael Johnson's 19.66 mark from the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials that he would break later that year in Atlanta with a 19.32.

And in another hint of the ongoing intranational rivalry that's fueled Bolt to new heights, countryman Asafa Powell ran the 100 in 9.72 at the same meet. A month ago, that would have been a world record.

Lastly, it's not too early to start thinking about London 2012, just over 1400 days away and approaching fast. The organizing committee (LOCOG) is considering an Opening Ceremony concept that would not just take place at a central stadium, but around the entire city.

"We don't want to try to emulate Beijing," [Olympics Minister Tessa ] Jowell told the Independent in an interview. "What we want is new ways of thinking about the opening ceremony. "We want the whole of London to be involved, with different parts of London taking part in the ceremony. The London Games must be deeply democratic, with the city's citizens feeling they're intimately involved."

The first torchbearer Zhu Hongyan (second from left) carries the torch during the Paralympic Torch Relay in Luoyang, Henan province, on Sept. 4, 2008. Photo credit: Xinhua