833 athletes participate in the national sports tournament for people with disabilities
833 disabled athletes from 31 provinces and cities participated in the 2013 National Sports Festival for the Disabled, which officially opened on July 24 in Hanoi.
Athletes will compete in six events including athletics, swimming, table tennis, badminton, weightlifting and chess, competing for more than 700 sets of medals, equivalent to more than 2,000 medals of all kinds.
Athletes compete in chess. (Photo: Manh Linh/VNA)
Of the six sports, athletics has the most events, with 290 events (154 for men, 136 for women); the sport with the fewest events is chess with 16 events (8 for men and 8 for women).
In the 2013 National Sports Festival for the Disabled, athletes competed in two small tournaments. The championship was for athletes aged 15 and over; the youth tournament was divided into two age groups, 14-16 years old and 17-21 years old.
Mr. Vu The Phiet, General Secretary of the Vietnam Paralympic Association, said that this year's tournament is larger in scale and of better quality than previous seasons because the delegations have prepared well for the training and professional training of the athletes. In particular, this year's tournament has seen the emergence of a number of promising new young faces from delegations such as Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and Quang Tri.
These athletes are expected to achieve high results so that the organizing committee can select them for the national team to compete at the 7th Southeast Asian Para Games (ASEAN Paragames 2014) taking place in Myanmar in January 2014.
The 2013 National Paralympic Sports Tournament will take place until July 28. The tournament is organized by the General Department of Sports and Physical Training in coordination with the Vietnam Paralympic Association and the Hanoi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism to develop the sports movement for the disabled and improve their health./.
According to (TTXVN) - DT
