into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. Participating delegations One-hundred and twenty-three delegations participated in the Sydney Paralympics. Included among them was a team of "Individual Paralympic Athletes" from East Timor. The newly independent country had not yet established a National Paralympic Committee, so the International Paralympic Committee invited East Timorese athletes to compete at the games under the title of Individual Paralympic Athletes. Barbados, Benin, Cambodia, El Salvador, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Palestine, Rwanda, Samoa, Turkmenistan, Vanuatu and Vietnam competed for the first time. Chinese Taipei (25) Individual Paralympic Athletes (2) Media coverage Media coverage of the Paralympic Games has steadily increased over the years. In the table below, the approximate number of accredited media at the Paralympic Summer Games from 1992 to 2008 has been listed. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had approximately 200 staff in Sydney for the Olympic games, 6 of whom stayed on to cover the Paralympic games. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired four one-hour shows of the Paralympic Games after the event was finished. TV New Zealand also aired four one-hour specials of the games post event. In the United States, CBS broadcast a special called Role Models for the 21st Century: The Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. The special was two hours long and aired in November. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) allowed viewers the opportunity to express their opinions towards the games. Comments were posted under the heading "Has the Sydney Paralympics been a success?" on their website. One viewer, Carole Neale from England, was cited as posting: "I am so disappointed to find the coverage limited to less than an hour per evening, on at a time when most people are still travelling home from work, and dismissed to BBC2, unlike the Olympics which had a prime time evening slot on BBC1 as well as constant live coverage". Views Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, multiple Paralympic gold medallist for Great Britain, later said of the Sydney Games: "Sydney 2000 will always hold a special place in the hearts of everyone who was there. The Aussies love their sport and they treated us simply as sportsmen and women. We weren't regarded as role models or inspirations, we were competitors. Some of us won gold medals, most didn't, but, hey, that's life. Sydney was phenomenal because, from day one, you felt there was something extraordinarily special in the air. Sydney was