New Delhi: Special Olympics Bharat (SOB), the national federation promoting sports for athletes with intellectual disabilities, announced a 16 member squad for the Special Olympics Asia Pacific Bocce and Bowling Competition. The event will be held from November 18th to 22nd at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex. The squad consists of 8 athletes each for both Bocce and Bowling, along with 8 coaches who will assist them.
The Men’s Bocce squad will be represented by Kabir Pritam Baruah, Ebenezer David, Wilfred Dsouza and Devansh Agarwal and the side will be coached by P.Arun and S.Anandan. The Women’s squad will see Priyanka, Manjula, Purnima Madan and G. Subhashini take the field. The team will be under the tutelage of Mamta and Pushpa Tripathi.
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The Indian Women’s Bowling team will have Neha Singh, Simran Pujara, Shraddha Patel and Susri Sangeeta Nayak representing the side in the prestigious event and will be coached by Shafali Gupta and Anupama Singh. Meanwhile the Men’s team will be represented by Ibhanan Sahu, Ankit, Prakash Veghela and Nirupam Dey. Akshat Sharma and Ileshbhai Raval will be the coaches of the side.
The Special Olympics Asia Pacific Bocce and Bowling Competition is the first of its kind on a global scale to be held in India. It will focus on older athletes with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) aged 22 or above.
More than 100 athletes from 12 Special Olympics Programs, including the likes of Australia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Phillipines, Hong Kong, Macao, Uzbekistan and Bangladesh besides Bharat, are set to participate in the competition, hailing from three different regions, namely, East Asia, Europe Eurasia, and Asia Pacific. It also marks a historic first for Special Olympics Bharat (SOB) as it introduces bowling as a competitive sport for Special athletes, in partnership with the Tenpin Federation of India.