On the international games of Special Olympics which take place these days in Berlin and for the first time in Germany, the coach of Iranian table tennis team refused to let an athlete from his team to compete with an Israeli player. A technical victory for David Carsanti in table tennis.
This morning, as part of the international games of Special Olympics that take place in Berlin, the Israeli table tennis athlete David Carsanti was supposed to compete at table tennis against an Iranian athlete. But, just before going on the pitch he realized, the coacher of the competing team was refusing to compete with an Israeli sports team and so, David won a technical victory.
Both of the table tennis players were called to their positions and stood together at the waiting point, right before the beginning of the contest. At that moment, the coach of the Iranian team approached to the refereeing position and asked to Disqualify his athlete from competing, claiming he had a fever.
Gon Tzuri the head of the Special Olympics Israel delegation to Berlin: ” Today was the first day of the table tennis heat in the contest. When the Israeli athlete, David Carsanti and the Iranian athlete were at the waiting point, the Iranian coach realized his team was to compete with Israel and informed his team’s tennis athlete was ill. At that moment, I turned to the organizers of the competition and asked to disqualify the Iranian delegation, due to the a-political nature of Special Olympics. I hope we won’t encounter any similar situations.
Special Olympics international Olympic games are held once in 4 years. On these Olympic games, athletes with intellectual developmental disabilities compete in a wide variety of sports. All this in order to reveal to the world the tremendous abilities inherent in people with intellectual developmental disabilities and so to help improve their integration into society.
The Special Olympics delegation is led by the head of Special Olympics Israel who is also a former Chief of the General Staff and a former Minister of Defense, Moshe (Boogie) Ya’alon and the president of Special Olympics , Michael Kleiner. At the competition, Israel is represented by a team which includes 35 athletes, coaches and escorts. The Israeli team will compete this year on 8 different sports: athletics, judo, swimming, tennis, bicycle, table tennis, football and even bowling.
The international games of Special Olympics are one of the largest sports events in the world. Yesterday, the international games event started with a Spectacular opening ceremony on the OlympicStadium in Berlin and took place on Germany for the first time. 7000 athletes who have cognitive disabilities from 180 different countries will compete on 26 different kinds of sports. In addition, 20,000 volunteers, 3,000 coaches and 300,000 watchers are part of this unique sports event.
Special Olympics is a global movement which was established in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, in order to end the discrimination of people who have Intellectual disabilities. The movement nurtures a full acceptance of this people, through sports and other diverse programs on the education field, health and leadership. There are more than 6 million of athletes active in more than 192 countries. The movement leads over 100,00 games and contests every year in over 30 different Olympic sports.
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