The competition sees five women's teams from China, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden and United States battle in action while the event takes place at the same time as the taekwondo and judo Olympic test events at the ExCeL Arena in London's Docklands.

All three events are two-day competitions which began this morning and will conclude tomorrow evening.

"Although we have had Paralympic athletes involved in the testing programme before, as we had wheelchair racers competing in our first test event which was the marathon in May, this goalball test event marks our first stand-alone Paralympic test event so it is a very exciting time," said London 2012 director of Paralympic integration Chris Holmes.

"It is fantastic to see competitive Paralympic sport happening for the first time in the Olympic Park and we also want to show people the first glimpse of what Paralympic sport will look like come the Games.

The event takes place just a week after the handball test event in order to test the transition of the venue, replicating operations at Games time when handball takes place during the Olympics before the venue is transformed to host goalball during the Paralympics.

All three test events this week are being used by London 2012 to test operations, technology and field of play but it is the first Paralympic test event that has attracted the most attention and helped put the spotlight on goalball.

The sport is a three-a-side team sport played by visually impaired athletes using a ball with bells inside.

Deemed one of the most exciting Paralympic sports, play is conducted in silence with just the sound of the bells used to judge movement of the ball.

The event begun as London 2012 Paralympic tickets went back on sale for the second time yesterday with goalball being one of the events with tickets still available for next year.

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