Team South Africa has named a 35-member team for next January’s International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World Championships in New Zealand, according to an IPC press release.
Oscar Pistorius, right, photograph courtesy of the IPC
The squad, which is more than twice as big as the one they took to the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, includes “blade runner” Oscar Pistorius, who will compete in the 100m, 200m, and 400m (T44 class)-all races he won four years ago at the last IPC Athletics World Championships in Assen, Netherlands.
The South African men’s team also includes Hilton Langenhoven, Beijing triple gold medalist, and long-distance legend Ernst van Dyk. The eight-member women’s team includes Beijing gold medalist Ilse Hayes.
Dion Bishop, South Africa Team Manager, said, “It’s quite a large team that we’re taking to New Zealand, and all the Paralympic medal winners are competing again, with Fanie Lombaard even coming back from ‘retirement’ to compete. I’m confident of us doing as well as we did in Beijing although one obviously needs to take into account that a lot of new talent is included for the World Championships.”
Bishop continued, “All the new athletes are exciting prospects, but the most promising, according to current world rankings, are youngsters like Anrune Liebenberg (female, 17 years old)-currently ranked number one in the 400m (T46 class) [and] Samkelo Radebe, fresh from his Commonwealth Games silver medal in the T45/46 class.
The IPC World Championship in New Zealand is the last major gathering of international athletes before of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
