The Paralympics will begin in Tokyo on Tuesday. The German Disabled Sports Association has nominated 134 athletes for the Games, making their way to the Games in Japan for the first time as Team Germany Paralympics. The line-up includes 58 female and 76 female athletes, two guides in para-athletics and one pilot in para-cycling.
Six of them come from Thuringia. Athletes are accompanied by 119 people on the functional team including trainers, doctors and supervisors. In all, 4,400 athletes from around 160 countries are expected to compete for medals and top performance at the postponed Paralympics in Tokyo.
Thuringia Bulls. has three wheelchair basketball players
Three of the six Thuringians come from the German wheelchair basketball champion Thuringia Bulls: Jens-Eike Albrecht, André Bieneck and Aliaksander Halauski. No club in the Free State sends more athletes to Tokyo. It is the first Paralympics for Albrecht, second for Halouski and fourth for Bienek.
A great group awaits three athletes, with Paralympic winners USA, World champions Great Britain, World Cup III Australia, Africa champions Algeria and World Cup IV Iran. In the first game against the United States, Elksleben meets two old friends. Matt Scott and Jake Williams, who played for the Thuringia Bulls, are part of the top favorite US team of the tournament.
Germany must be at least fourth in the group to advance to the quarter-finals. This will mainly depend on the naturalization of Aleksandra Halouski. The Minsk-born Belarusian, who is a parasport athlete with a knee injury, was the top scorer in the Bundesliga last season.
Jens-Eike Albrecht is excited. Even though, like all other athletes, he is only allowed to leave the Olympic Village for training and games, he is looking forward to experience. He also learned some Japanese vocabulary before the trip.
From a sporting point of view, of course, it’s fantastic. We have been able to get used to it over the years. Automatisms exist. But it’s also great to play with others.
The debutant gets tips from Bulls captain Andre Biennec. The 35-year-old sees good opportunities for the German team in Tokyo. He and Halouski notably have been playing together for years. There are a total of twelve players and six coaches and supervisors from the German team. Bulls team manager Lutz Lezmann is also proud. The fact that Elksleben has three players is the result of years of work, Lezmann says. He will follow his players on TV.
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