SWIMMING

The SWIMMING competition in the Atlanta Paralympic Games was really exciting with swimmers finishing just fractions of a second apart in several races. These Games witnessed the participation of 70 swimmers - 29 women and 41 men - from 25 countries in the IBSA events. Nevertheless, the numbers were down somewhat from those in BARCELONA, where 39 women and 52 men took part.

 18 WORLD RECORDS AND 21 PARALYMPIC RECORDS were beaten. We take this opportunity to congratulate, through our magazine, the following swimmers who have written a glorious page in the history books of blind sports, in their respective events:

- YVONNE HOPF (Germany) : 3 records.
- MARIE CLAIRE ROSS (Canada) : 2 records.
- EILA NILSSON (Sweden). 1 record.
- RAQUEL SAAVEDRA (Spain). 1 record.
- ELIZABETH SCOTT (USA). 1 record.

The German team - made up of DANIELA ROCHLE, BIRGIT BECKER, DANIELA ILENKE and YVONNE HOPF - set a new Women's Relay record.

The men's records were achieved by:

- KINGSLEY BUGARIN (Australia) : 3 records.
- CHRISTIAN BUNDGAARD (Denmark) : 2 records.
- WALTER WU (Canada) with 2 World and 2 Paralympic records.
- CHRIS HOLMES (Great Britain) : 1 record.
- NOEL PETERSEN (Norway) : 1 record.

EGBERT KLEYNHANA (South Africa) set a new Paralympic record and just missed beating the world best too.

Many hours of dedicated training are required on the part of the athletes - and also their coaches - in order to reach such high standards.

Not all the countries that took part in BARCELONA were represented in ATLANTA. I should like to use these pages to transmit a message and issue a challenge to all the IBSA member countries to see if we can beat the record of participation in SYDNEY 2000.

And no combined events, please.

By: Audrey Strom. Chairperson of the IBSA Swimming Committee