By Sahar Foladi
Athletes from a small local club in the South East are set to travel half way across the world to compete in this year’s Special Olympics World Games.
Dandenong Casey Titans affiliated with Special Olympics Sports work hard within the community to make sports available for those with special needs.
The hard-work of the organisation and athletes has paid off with three of their athletes qualified for the Summer Games set in Berlin of June this year.
Club’s Chair and Secretary Peter Fulcher-Meredith said “We’re really proud and excited because we’re always seen as a small club then to have three of our athletes chosen on international level to participate for Australia is amazing.”
Nick Bruin will compete in basketball while husband and wife duo Andrew and Vicki Robbins will play bocce.
“It was our dream to go to World Games together,” Mr Robbins said.
Mr Robbins has been to the games in 2007, 2011 and 2019 along with Mrs Robbins.
They both aim to bring home gold medals.
There will be 64 Aussie athletes with intellectual disabilities at the World Games alongside 7,000 others from 190 delegations.
The Summer Games in Berlin covers variety of sports including, basketball, bocce, bowling, equestrian, golf, gymnastics, swimming and tennis.
However, financial strains to get to Berlin are a significant hurdle.
Players have to pay $9,000 each to compete.
“We’ll run fundraisers to help them. The club will pay an incentive to get them started,” Mr Fulcher-Meredith said.
As a minor local club, Mr Fulcher-Meredith said they rely on funds but it’s hard when they’re not often in the spotlight.
“For us the challenge is to keep afloat and get funding. It’s hard to be heard sometimes.”
The three athletes competed in Nationals last year, the first since Covid, and qualified for the World Games which according to Mr Fulcher-Meredith is “equivalent to the Olympic Games.”
The club wrapped up with 25 medals comprising of eight bronze, seven gold and 10 silver.
There are more than 7,000 Australian athletes in Special Olympic and 60 registered athletes from the Dandenong Casey Titans club.
Mr Fulcher-Meredith said although the club wants their athletes to achieve higher goals, the aim is to grow participant numbers into the hundreds.
“We want people to achieve internationally but we want more special needs athletes to get the opportunity. A lot of people don’t even know these sports and activities are out there. I would love to attract people to our clubs so that athletes can enjoy the inspiration they get for feeling worthwhile.”
Special Olympics is the only organisation authorised by the International Olympic Committee to use the word “Olympics”.
Special Olympic is a global movement founded by John F Kennedy’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shrivers supporting more than 5 million athletes in 177 countries.
