With the Paralympics Games just six months to go in Rio, The Gambia National Paralympics Committee is working very hard to get its athletes ready for the classification and qualifications either in Tunisia, Italy, Morocco or France.
“We are working very hard to get funding from the National Sports Council or any other source of funding to get our athletes to these qualification competitions. We are therefore appealing for support, particularly from the President who has always supported us,” Paralympics Committee President Sulayman Colley told Observer Sports.
The priority for the Committee, he told this medium is to send a team to Tunisia starting 20th March, which is cheaper. “If that is not possible we can target the competitions later in Morocco and in Italy for classification and qualification in May and June,” he said.
“We wrote to the GNOC but we received a letter from them saying their funding is only for Olympic qualifiers, which is really hard to understand.”
He concluded that the GNPC has the athletes that can raise the country’s flag high and urged the general public to support disabled sports.
by Alieu Ceesay