The World Series 2021 travels to Lewisville, USA for the second leg of the tournament this week. Around 116 athletes representing 20 nations and teams will head to the LISD Westside Aquatic Centre for the three-day event, which starts on Thursday (15 April).
The home team will be led by 13-time
Paralympic champion Jessica Long and three-time Paralympic champion McKenzie
Coan, as well as Paralympic and world champion Rebecca Meyers and world
champion Lawrence Sapp.
For many athletes it will be their
first international competition for more than a year. They were due to take
part in the World Series in Indianapolis, USA, last year, before it was
cancelled following the outbreak of COVID-19.
Protocols will be in place at the
centre, which hosts the World Series for the first time, and there will be no
spectators.
Heats and finals will be streamed
live on the World Para Swimming website www.worldparaswimming.org and Facebook
page www.facebook.com/ParaSwimming.
FIRST-TIMERS
The event will also be an historic
one for Grenada, which makes its international Para swimming debut. Nye
Cruickshank will be the first athlete from the Caribbean island to compete in
the sport on the world’s stage. The S10 swimmer will race in freestyle,
backstroke, breaststroke and individual medley.
Barbados and Paraguay are other two
nations making their World Series debut. Barbadian swimmer Antwahn
Boyce-Vaughan is set to compete in three races while Paraguayan Rodrigo
Hermosa, who competed at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games, will be in
action in the men’s 50m freestyle S9.
USA Paralympic silver medallist
Lizzie Smith said she was happy to race again in preparation for the postponed
Paralympic Games in Tokyo this summer.
“My last international competition
was the World Series meet last February [2020] in Melbourne, and I feel a
little naïve when I look back at that time.
“I left the meet feeling disappointed
that I didn’t swim the times I was hoping for. Going into the Lewisville World
Series, competing has a different meaning to me, I’m feeling very fortunate to
get to do my craft and race again,” said the S9 swimmer.
“It also fills me with a ton of pride
that I get to be at this meet racing for my slot to represent Team USA in the
Tokyo Paralympics.
“The Paralympics is quite literally
changing the world. Through sport we are changing how the world perceives
people with disabilities. I’m honoured to be part of a movement that has given
athletes a podium to be elite not despite our disabilities but with our
disabilities.”
Australian Paralympic champion
Timothy Diskin (S9), Mexico’s world champion Arnulfo Castorena (S4), and
Parapan Am Games silver medallist Alejandra Aybar (S8) from the Dominican
Republic are among the international swimmers.
Yui Maori will be the only athlete
from Japan at the event. The S5 swimmer hopes to be part of the host nation’s
team at the Games in Tokyo.
HISTORY-MAKER
Afghan-born Mohammad Abas Karimi will
also compete as part of his bid to get into the Refugee Para Athletes Team for
Tokyo.
He made history at the 2017 World
Championships in Mexico City when he became the first refugee to win a medal at
a major Para swimming event – he won silver in the men’s 50m butterfly S5. In
2018 the swimmer also won gold at the World Series in Indianapolis.
Mexico will send the biggest team to
the event, with 33 athletes, followed by USA with 30 and Australia 14. Among the
other international visitors are Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
India, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Philippines, Puerto Rico and Uruguay.
Fourteen-time USA Paralympic champion
Erin Popovich is now associate director of sports operations for US Para
Swimming. She said the team had worked hard to make this year’s event in
Lewisville “as positive as possible” after last year’s cancellation.
"We are so excited to welcome
many of the world's best swimmers to Lewisville. It has been an incredible team
effort, but we have worked hard to ensure a safe and competitive environment
for the athletes by implementing COVID-19 protocols,” she said.
“When this event was cancelled due to
the pandemic a year ago, we knew we wanted this year to be as positive an experience
as possible for everyone involved, and I think we're well on our way to
accomplishing that. We are looking forward to bringing the world of Para
swimming together this week."
There are five stops in the World
Series. The first was Sheffield, then Lewisville and Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy
this week. Australia and Germany are next. During the World Series 2019 season
more than 1,300 athletes from 84 countries took part.
The World Para Swimming Points System
will be used at the World Series competitions. Athletes’ results will be
calculated using a standardised points system. This will ensure that the
overall World Para Swimming World Series Female and Male Winners will be the
best performing athlete over the duration of the series.
The International Paralympic
Committee (IPC) is the global governing body of the Paralympic Movement.
The IPC supervises the organisation
of the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games, and serves as the International
Federation for ten sports, for which it oversees and co-ordinates the World
Championships and other competitions, including swimming.
The IPC is committed to enabling
Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and to developing sport
opportunities for all persons with a disability from the beginner to elite
level. In addition, the IPC aims to promote the Paralympic values, which
include courage, determination, inspiration and equality.
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