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ATHLETES will strive for glory in Port Elizabeth at the biggest sports event for the physically disabled in South Africa next year.
The city will host the 2010 Nedbank National Championships for the Physically Disabled from March 25 to 30 at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
It is the third time the Bay has hosted the event – this year’s was held here in April.
The city of Polokwane was supposed to host next year’s championships but was unable to, so the Bay received the honour on the basis of its highly successful past events.
Four of the Eastern Cape’s Paralympic athletes who will compete in next year’s games – shotput and discus athletes Michael Louwrens and Duane Strydom, swimmer Kevin Paul and long jump and track athlete David Roos – have also been selected to represent South Africa in London at the next Paralympics in 2012.
More than 1500 physically disabled and visually impaired athletes from 12 regional associations will take part in multicoded sports events including athletics, swimming, archery, football, goal ball, boccia (similar to bowls), table tennis, wheelchair tennis, judo, cycling and power lifting.
The swimming section will be held at the Newton Park swimming pool.
The chairman of the Eastern Cape Sports Association for the Physically Disabled, Wanele Klassen, said: “Over the past 17 years this annual multisport event has been the feeder system for the national Paralympics team and other representative teams. Paralympics champion Oscar Pistorius was discovered at these championships.”
Other athletes who have competed and continually excelled at the national championships, breaking numerous South African and world records, include swimmers Natalie du Toit and Tadhg Slattery.
The Eastern Cape team finished in fifth place at this year’s event.
Although this year’s nationals were held in April, the organisers have decided to host an awards ceremony at 6pm today at the NMMU’s Missionvale campus, in order to link up with the provincial trials which started yesterday and end today.
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