Team hope to improve on Atlanta results

Ireland will have a team of 40 athletes competing at the Sydney Paralympics, which take place after the summer Olympics (October 18th-29th). The team includes a number of current world champions, world record holders and previous Paralympic medallists.

Like Atlanta four years ago, the team will travel will high expectations. On that occasion they brought home one gold, three silver and six bronze medals but now, with full funding from the Irish Sports Council, the team is prepared better than ever.

"This really is a fantastic team," said Anne Ebbs, Secretary-General of the Paralympic Council of Ireland, at yesterday's team announcement in the Phoenix Park. "I think we will certainly improve on the results in Atlanta and our athletes are getting an unprecedented level of back-up support."

The Paralympics is the second largest sporting event in the world, surpassed only by the summer Olympics themselves. Sydney will host a record 4,000 Paralympic athletes from just over 100 countries.

Among the more experienced members of the Irish team is wheelchair athlete Patrice Dockery, who competed in her first games in 1988 in Seoul and subsequently at Barcelona and Atlanta. "There is something special about competing at these Paralympics," she said. "It's about wearing the Irish singlet and representing your country and that makes it different.

"But the competition is also extremely tough. What a lot of people forget is that Paralympic means parallel to the Olympics and not paraplegic, which is something different."

Also in the team is veteran campaigner Michael Cunningham, representing Ireland for the eighth consecutive time. He took gold in the javelin in Toronto back in 1976, but competes here with the table tennis team, his more familiar event.

The other sports to be represented are archery, boccia, equestrian, judo, sailing, and swimming. The team was drawn from the Irish Wheelchair Association, Irish Blindsports, Cerebral Palsy Ireland, the Equestrian Federation of Ireland and the Irish Sailing Association.