Around 30 psychologists gathered in Cairo as Egypt focuses on athlete eligibility

Eligibility workshops for Americas and Asia announced

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The International Federation for Athletes with Intellectual Impairments (World Intellectual Impairment Sport) has published details of two regional eligibility workshops to take place in 2019.

The sessions are being held with the support of the Agitos Foundation and aim to give participants an introduction to the process.

The first will be held in Puerto Rico from 2-3 April for all World Intellectual Impairment Sport Americas countries. It will be followed a month later in Hong Kong from 2-4 May for World Intellectual Impairment Sport Asia members.

The workshops will provide an orientation to the eligibility process for athletes with an intellectual impairment together with updates on the additional additional impairment groups.

Registration is set to open in the coming weeks. Workshops are also open to countries that are not World Intellectual Impairment Sport members to expand their reach.

Professor Jan Burns, World Intellectual Impairment Sport’ Head of Eligibility, said: “We have done a lot of work in the past few years to improve our members’ expertise around eligibility. This is part of our role in making sure they are aware of the basics but also up to date with the latest research and developments in the area.

“The sessions are important because they give members the tools to provide a high quality service to their athletes. In turn this allows NEOs [National Eligibility Officers] to assess more potential competitors much quicker than before, allowing team sizes to expand over a shorter period of time, whilst maintaining our high standards regarding eligibility.

“We are looking forward to welcoming participants from Asia and Americas as World Intellectual Impairment Sport builds the quality of high performance sport for athletes with intellectual impairments around the world.”

The workshops are part of a successful bid by World Intellectual Impairment Sport for funding through the Agitos Foundation’s Grant Support Programme. The Agitos Foundation is the development arm of the International Paralympic Committee.