Disability Sport Wales
Chwaraeon Anabledd Cymru

Wenlock welcomes Rollers

One of London’s Olympic and Paralympic mascots, Wenlock, made a surprise visit to Australia’s wheelchair basketball team at their pre-World Championships training camp in Cardiff last week.

The Rollers were the first team to test the facilities at Cardiff University, Talybont, which will be used by the Australian Paralympic Team as a training base before the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Team Manager Leigh Gooding said the team was happy with its training camp and believes the Australian Paralympic team will benefit from Cardiff University’s world class facilities before heading to London in 2012.

“The Cardiff camp was a great success for us and I believe it will be a super venue for the 2012 preliminaries for many teams. We look forward to going back there before London,” Gooding said.

With the success of the camp and the Rollers’ recent form, the team is confident in its ability to take out the World Championship trophy, when the IWBF World Championships kick off in Birmingham tomorrow.

Australia has never won the men’s or women’s World Championships, while wheelchair basketball heavyweights USA and Canada have dominated the honour board. But riding high on the success of one of the Rollers’ best years in 2009, they are in strong contention for the 2010 title.

After winning gold at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games, the Rollers won the 2009 Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, the Rollers World Challenge in Sydney and the IWBF Asia-Oceania Zone Championships in Melbourne.

In the more recent 2010 Paralympic World Cup, held in May, the Rollers won bronze, conceding their title to the powerful USA side.

The Australians will face France in their opening game of the tournament on Thursday 8th July before taking on Mexico, Turkey, Algeria and Canada in the remaining round-robin stage.

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