Canada’s Special Olympics team off to World Games for 1st time since 2019 – National | 24CA News
It’s like a heartbeat. That’s how Special Olympics Team Canada athlete Tyra Flukinger describes the acoustics of a basketball courtroom.
“We’re all dribbling, shooting… it’s like a heartbeat, like drums to me,” she advised Global News.
Flukinger is presently in Berlin, Germany for the 2023 Special Olympics World Games, which marks a return to the worldwide competitors because the earlier Games in 2019.
The World Games are totally different from the Paralympics that run alongside the Olympics. Think of them because the World Athletic Championships — one of many highest ranges of athletic competitors potential.
A complete of 89 athletes will likely be representing Canada on the World Games, which run between June 17 to June 25. Athletes will likely be competing in 9 sports activities together with athletics, basketball, bocce, tenpin bowling, golf, powerlifting, rhythmic gymnastics, soccer and swimming.
Flunkinger is joined in Berlin by Special Olympics Canada honorary coach Stephanie Labbé, who holds an Olympic gold medal as goalkeeper for Canada’s nationwide ladies’s soccer staff. She can be the overall supervisor of girls’s soccer for the Vancouver Whitecaps.
“Going to the World Games with Team Canada is an honour,” Labbé advised Global News. “I know everyone is super excited to get back to it and I certainly can’t wait to see [the athletes] compete again.”
Canada ladies’s nationwide soccer staff goalkeeper Stephanie Labbé poses for images along with her gold medal from the Tokyo Olympics after an announcement in Vancouver on March 16, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck.
The Canadian Press
The World Games are the flagship occasion for Special Olympics and happen each two years, alternating between the summer season and winter video games.
This yr brings a bunch of recent beginnings for the Special Olympics motion. The Berlin competitors would be the first World Games since 2019, as a result of pandemic. Team Canada can be debuting their first all-women’s soccer and basketball groups in Berlin.
“Even though we’ve only known each other for a few months, we call each other family,” Flunkinger mentioned, referring to her basketball staff. Although she has been enjoying with Special Olympics Canada for eight years, that is her first time collaborating within the World Games.
The choice course of for World Game athletes was totally different this yr as effectively. Instead of incomes a spot based mostly on 2022 Summer Games, which didn’t happen, athletes have been picked from throughout the nation based mostly on registration at every provincial/territorial chapter. It means many staff members had by no means been acquainted previous to World Games coaching camps started, and will likely be competing collectively for the very first time in Berlin.
Because of the pandemic, it’s additionally many Special Olympics athletes’ first time enjoying on the worldwide stage. That’s why Labbé says a giant a part of her position on the video games this yr will likely be cheering her staff on each step of the best way.
“I think it’s about reminding these athletes that they’re here for a reason and they’re good enough,” mentioned Labbé, who was chosen as honorary coach in November final yr. “The best outcome that they could have is that they have fun, they enjoy it, and they make new friends.”
Special Olympics was based in 1968 and affords year-round sports activities coaching and athletic competitors in a wide range of sports activities throughout age teams. Labbé mentioned a think about why she took on the brand new position is as a result of she believes within the significance of offering inclusive alternatives for Canadians with mental disabilities.
“I think it’s important that (Special Olympics athletes) know as human beings, as athletes, that they are worth the same as anybody else, that they matter just the same and that they can have the same opportunities that anybody else can have,” Labbé mentioned.
Phil Brown has been a powerlifter with Special Olympics Canada for 31 years. Last yr on his thirtieth anniversary with the group, he discovered he was becoming a member of Team Canada for the primary time on the Berlin World Games.
“I just cried,” Brown mentioned to Global News.
The 55-year-old athlete stands at five-foot-five inches and 138 kilos, but he can deadlift nearly thrice his weight.
Brown, who’s from Nova Scotia, has been to 11 nationwide competitions for various totally different sports activities. He has roughly 200 medals from Special Olympics competitions, which he retains in a jar at residence, however says there’s nonetheless room for a couple of extra.
Brown grew up in foster care and confronted years of bullying earlier than being found at age 17 by powerlifter Debbie Key, who grew to become his first fitness center coach.
“I try not to reflect on what happened. I went through something no kid should go through,” he mentioned. “So you could say powerlifting saved my life… and Special Olympics is deep in my heart.”
A latest Canadian research printed in December, 2022 discovered that participation in Special Olympics reduces the chance of despair in younger adults with mental disabilities.
The research, printed in December in a medical journal titled the Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, famous that the mixture of bodily actions and the social connectedness of “being part of a team” helps decrease the chance of being identified with despair as a younger grownup.
But Labbé says there are nonetheless boundaries to beat to make sports activities extra accessible for folks with mental disabilities — a combat that the Special Olympics World Games places within the highlight.
“Everybody deserves to have the chance to travel the world, to compete in sport, to push themselves, to meet new people and to learn all of the things that sport can teach us,” she mentioned. “I think everybody deserves that opportunity.”
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
