News

By Michael Beattie

Wheelchair tennis history will be made on the clay courts of Paris and the lawns of south-west London in June and July of 2019, when both Roland Garros and Wimbledon host quad wheelchair singles and doubles competitions for the first time.

It is a move that sees quad wheelchair tennis join the men’s and women’s wheelchair events on the schedule of all four Grand Slam tournaments – the latest significant milestone for a sport not yet 50 years old, established in the wake of a young skier’s drive to adapt to life in a chair.

Marginal gain has common parlance in cycling with the success of Team Sky, now Team Ineos. The British team is known for its approach of making numerous small improvements to significantly improve performance. And, as the studies below show, para-cycling is far from left behind in this domain and increasingly benefits from the findings of scientific studies.  

Tandems, handbikes and aerodynamics

World Rugby and the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation have reaffirmed their commitment to close collaboration after a productive week of meetings in Dublin.

World Rugby House played host to a series of planning meetings of the IWRF Board and Committee Chairs as well as strategic workshops between the two federations, who signed a memorandum of understanding in 2010 to work together on matters of mutual interest at a time of unprecedented growth.

The International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) has announced the launch of an exciting new addition to its competition programme from 2020 – the IWAS Guttmann Games.

The games will only feature sports and events not currently on the Paralympic Games programme, offering athletes with physical impairments the chance to compete at an international level every four years.

In March 2019, after two years of consultation with athlete representatives and stakeholders across the Paralympic Movement, the IPC Athletes' Council published its first strategy to act as a guide to both athletes and the IPC membership as to how the IPC Athletes’ Council can build athlete leaders and ensure the Paralympic Movement is athlete-centred.

The International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) have announced that Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, will host the IWAS World Games 2020 from 20-28 February, just six months before the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

The news follows on from a successful 2019 edition which was staged in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in February.

The organisers of Nakhon Ratchasima 2020, the Sports Association for the Disabled of Thailand (SADT), plan to offer an impressive programme of action.

Text by Lloyd Green | Images by Alan Spink

Forty-seven participants from six African countries attended a three-day Para badminton Technical Workshop in Uganda which was supported by Agitos Foundation and conducted by BWF.

Held for the third consecutive year, the workshop attracted participants from Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The workshop was held during the Uganda Para-Badminton International 2019 last week in Kampala.

WBF have published their 2019 Official Handbook following the last IWBF Executive Council meeting, which took place in Mies, Switzerland on the 6-7 April 2019.

Several important changes to the IWBF internal regulations were approved at the Executive Council meeting and are now available.

It was also agreed that one comprehensive document named “IWBF Official Handbook” would be produced to include all IWBF statutes and internal regulations to make them readily and easily accessible.

The International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA) has released the first details about items which will be presented to members as its 2019 General Assembly in Fort Wayne, USA, from 3-6 July.

Opening the discussions on day one will be the new IBSA strategic plan which will take the organisation from 2020 to 2024. This will feature finances, the future of the IBSA sports, and classification.

Members will be consulted on how the Executive Board plan to make IBSA the world’s leading organisation for blind and visually impaired sports.

The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) and World ParaVolley have teamed up for the first time to explore cooperative opportunities in the following disciplines: indoor volleyball, beach volleyball, snow volleyball, sitting volleyball and beach ParaVolley.

World ParaVolley is the independent organisation responsible for planning and delivering the sport of ParaVolley for athletes with physical impairments. The new agreement will see World ParaVolley work in close collaboration with the FIVB, the federation responsible for all forms of volleyball.

The International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS) World Games concluded in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a final flourish as record fell on the athletics field on Saturday (16 February).

The games have taken place over six days, featuring more than 500 athletes from 50 countries competing in seven sports – athletics, swimming, archery, badminton, shooting, table tennis and wheelchair fencing.

Full results are available at the IWAS website.