As 49-year-old Jim  Anderson gets his three-event Paralympic swimming programme under way this week, he will do so buoyed by the knowledge that he is in the form of his life.

In a sport normally regarded at elite level as being for youngsters, with David Carry, the Scottish swimmer, seen as an Olympic veteran at just 31, this will be the Stirling-based swimmer's sixth Paralympics. It is as educative as it is inspirational to discover that with his sixth decade just eight months away, the proud owner of 17 Paralympic medals continues to improve.

"Jim is 49 at the moment yet he produced a personal best last year at the European Championships," explained Paul Wilson, development officer at Scottish Disability Swimming. "In the lower classifications we tend to find that these guys get involved in sport later in life, so Jim didn't really start swimming until he was 17 or 18.

"It also takes those in lower classifications a little bit longer to progress through the programmes, but they are set up to support that, providing support to an older age group."

To that end, Wilson is swift  to point to the benefits of the  disabled swimmers, having been integrated fully into Scottish Swimming's performance programme in the last couple of years.

Previously there was support available from the Scottish Institute of Sport, but standards have been raised by that full alignment with the set-up which led to Scotland's able-bodied swimmers effectively out-performing their rivals from the rest of Britain at the Olympics earlier this month.

While the overall British effort was not quite as good as expected, Scotland's six Olympians achieved the target set for them in conjunction with sportscotland, bringing back the first Olympic medal since 1996 thanks to Michael Jamieson. Their collective appearance in 11 finals was also beyond what anyone anticipated.

The Paralympians have, however, surpassed their target even before any of them have competed in the London pool, as Wilson happily pointed out. "My target for the meet was to get three swimmers into the Paralympic team, so we've exceeded expectations in getting five into the team," he said. "It's made a huge difference [being brought into the Scottish Swimming set-up]. The progression that's been made over the past couple of years, getting these guys into some of our top clubs and top programmes, linking in more seamlessly with the Institute network has made a massive difference to all of these guys.

"We've got the five who are on the team, but there are others who are linking into that support as well, in particular a couple of guys who just missed out on qualification. The support we get is second to none and all of them have shown a big improvement through that."

In saying so, he paid tribute to the support being offered by leading coaches, and since, for any coach, the greatest satisfaction is from identifying and nurturing talent, the scale of the opportunity that Paralympic sport provides could hardly be more attractive.

Whereas elite able-bodied sport seems in most areas to approach the limit of human capability, examples like that of Anderson demonstrate that there is huge scope within the Paralympic arena. For Wilson, that is both exciting and challenging.

"Most of those in the lower classifications come in from disability specific learn-to-swim programmes and then link into disability specific swimming clubs," he said. "So my biggest role is trying to identify where the swimmers are and who's doing what where. A lot of that is working closely with the clubs, sign-posting swimmers into the right opportunities. It's about working with the clubs.

"The big role with us is trying to educate people who are involved in the sport to make sure that they can identify what is potential, making sure they understand a little bit about the sport and if they're not sure they're making contact with the national governing body.

"We are doing a lot of work with British Swimming at the moment producing a talent identification tool-kit which is effectively something that can be used by coaches and swimming teachers as well as school teachers so that they know that if a swimmer in those lower classifications can do certain times or there are things they can achieve. It gives them a bit of a prompt as to what they could be doing with that swimmer.

"Again, a lot of it is trying to give them the confidence to look at that swimmer and realise they should be contacting the national governing body and let them make the decision as to what is the best opportunity to support them in the sport, whether that is into the competitive element or just getting them to enjoy the sport."

Setting aside any do-gooding rhetoric, it has to be acknowledged that the Paralympics are unlikely to produce the same extent of coverage or euphoria as the London Olympics generated in the same arenas last month.

Nevertheless, a light is set to be shone on disabled sport as never before, in this country at least, and it is already producing stories, like that of Anderson, that will inspire admiration and perhaps even awe.

The next 12 days may prove life-changing not only for the athletes and those who seek to emulate them, but also for those who, like the personnel at Scottish Swimming, realise how they can contribute to helping them do so.