UKAD has successfully played its part in preparing the British team for Rio 2016, by ensuring that every athlete has all the information they need to make the right choices and compete clean.
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Wednesday’s opening ceremony has been sold out, with 159 nations, plus two refugees in an Independent Paralympic Athletes team, represented, while unlike in the Olympics Russia is banned for state-sponsored doping. India has sent its largest contingent of 19 athletes to the Paralympics. All the experts from around the world from the different sports are here. Guttman coined the event the Stoke Mandeville Games, which saw 16 servicemen and women participate in archery.
While events such as swimming and athletics will be competitive, due to the lack of para-athletes in other disciplines many events will be demonstrations.
Working in partnership with the British Paralympic Association (BPA), UKAD has delivered education to almost 400 Paralympic athletes across 19 sports, via UKAD’s Rio-focussed education programme which began in 2015.
The president of the International Paralympic Committee, Philip Craven, made a similar point with his speech.
Snyder said that if people tune in to the games and fans haven’t shown up to watch an event live, they might be more likely to change the channel.
Rio 2016 spokesperson Mario Andrada said: “We passed 1.6million tickets sold”.
Paralympic athlete training at Rio. Brazil’s struggling economy and low ticket sales had contributed to a more-than $100 million funding shortfall. Russian Federation is absent from the Games due to a ban for state-sponsored doping. However, the downside was that the level of workforce and transport services had to be slashed along with some media centers having to be closed.
“Canadian Sport Institute Pacific is proud to support many of Canada’s most dedicated athletes, who are competing at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games”, said said Wendy Pattenden, CEO, Canadian Sport Institute Pacific.
Canada’s 162 athletes are among the 4,300 competing in 23 sports.
The first of 11 days of competition takes place on Thursday and the Games run until September 18.
At the 2012 Paralympics in London, Russia came second with 36 gold medals (102 total) to the world’s Paralympic superpower China, whose athletes won 95 gold medals and 231 in total. This would mark the largest ever number of Indian athletes representing their nation in the worldwide para-sporting event. They go there on taxpayers’ money just for vacation.
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ParalympicsGB were led into the packed arena by 10-time equestrian champion Lee Pearson.
