British Wheelchair Basketball announces its training venue for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games.
On Monday 19 February 2018 representatives of the GB Wheelchair Basketball team visited Urayasu, Japan to celebrate the signing of the formal agreement between the sport and the City.
The delegation of the GB Team including GB Women’s Head Coach Miles Thompson, GB Women’s Co-captain, Sophie Carrigill and British Wheelchair Basketball’s Performance Director Paul Davies attended a signing ceremony to formally confirm the agreement, as well as a celebratory evening dinner.
Urayasu, which is situated approximately 10km to the South East of Tokyo will host the GB Wheelchair Basketball teams’ training and preparation camps ahead of the 2020 Paralympic Games. It will also offer both teams the opportunity to acclimatise to both the hot and humid conditions that Tokyo typically experiences in summer time, as well as allowing the players to overcome jetlag as they adjust their body clocks to the Tokyo time zone.
The announcement of Urayasu City as the location for the GB Tokyo holding camp, coincided with the GB Women’s visit to Japan to compete in the annual Osaka Cup. This tournament marked the start of the GB Women’s tournament preparations for the 2018 World Championships that take place in Hamburg, Germany in August this year. The GB team faced both the Netherlands and Australia during the two day Osaka Cup competition – both of which have been drawn in their World Championships Pool.
Attending the celebrations in Urayasu and supporting the team at Osaka, British Wheelchair Basketball’s Performance Director, Paull Davies commented:
“Our teams are focused on the next two very important years of competition as we strive towards delivering success at the 2018 World Championships and achieving Paralympic qualification at the 2019 Europeans.
“To be able to confirm the location and the logistics of our pre-Games preparation camp two years out from the Paralympic Games allows us to give full focus to these important tournaments.”
He went on to say:
“The ability to work with a partner such as Urayasu City gives us absolute confidence that we will be able to deliver the very best training environment for our athletes ahead of the Tokyo games.”
