TANZANIA Paralympic Committee (TPC) has confirmed that they have been given a chance to send one athlete to compete in the Singapore 2020 Para Swimming World Series set to begin from May 1st to 3rd.
However, TPC, through its Secretary General, Tuma Dandi said the committee has requested the World Para Swimming Association to allow Tanzania to send two swimmers for the Singapore event.
“Another Tanzanian athlete (not mentioned) who was expecting to be featured in the upcoming Australia’s Melbourne 2020 Para Swimming World Series from February 14th to 16th will not go for the contest due to reasons beyond our reach as such, we have requested them (World Para Swimming Association) to include him and another Tanzanian for the Singapore competition,” Dandi said in a press statement.
She continued: “Our target is to deploy two swimmers for the Singapore mission with similar event also expected to happen in Australia, England, USA, Portugal, Brazil, Italy and German. It will help to expose our athletes prior to the Tokyo Paralympic Competition to be staged in Japan later this year.”
According to Dandi, the yet to be named two swimmers are expected to arrive in Singapore on April 27th for them to take part in the vital classification exercise which helps to categorise the athletes in line with the level of their disabilities to have a balanced competition.
“Currently, Tanzania has only one classified swimmer Gerald Sokolo who scooped grade S7SB6SM7 and is known by the World Para Swimming Association and he competed in the Para Swimming Competition which was held in Kenya in 2018,” Dandi noted.
Again, Dandi disclosed that in Para Swimming, there are 14 classes of which class 1 to 10 involves swimmers who have physical disabilities while class 11 to 13 is for athletes with vision disabilities and class 14 attracts intellectual disadvantaged swimmers.
However, the 2019 season saw over 1,300 swimmers from 84 countries competing. Spain’s Antoni Ponce was crowned the men’s individual winner and Great Britain’s Alice Tai took the women’s individual title.
All athletes’ results at each World Series edition are calculated using a standardised World Para Swimming points system via an online virtual competition platform.
This ensures that the overall World Para Swimming World Series winner will be the best performing athlete over the duration of the series, meaning that every performance counts.
