The After Party is under way. The XV Paralympic Games in Rio opened on Wednesday night with a feat to defy expectations in a carnival atmosphere at the Maracana Stadium. International Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Craven journeyed from the Paralympic movement’s birthplace of Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire in an introductory video. And there was an audible gasp in the 78,000-seat stadium as someone in a wheelchair propelled themselves down a six-storey high ramp and through a hoop. It was not Craven, a former Paralympic swimmer and wheelchair basketball player who had done his best James Bond impersonation, but extreme wheelchair athlete Aaron ‘Wheelz’ Fotheringham.That was the first of many feats which will astound at the Games, which have belatedly captured the imagination, 17 days after the Olympics closed with the Paralympics embroiled in the worst build-up in its 56-year history. Malta’s sole representative at the Rio Paralympic Games is Vlada Kravchenko (bottom). The 25-year-old Ukrainian-born swimmer will compete in the 50m butterfly, 50m backstroke and 100m breaststroke.