SASAPD president encourages athletes to excel at Nationals

The nationals will be held in Gqeberha from today until Tuesday. 

Speaking to SABC Sport, Miggels says they will also be using the event to start preparing athletes for the 2028 Paralympics.

“We want our athletes to improve their times since we are already building up to the Paralympics in 2028 and also the Commonwealth Games next year,” Miggels said.

So, this event is important for us because we also use it to scout for young talent,” Miggels said.

Para-athletes have to undergo classification, which then determines which event they should be competing in, in order to minimise the impact of their impairment on sport performance.

The athletes then go through a process called Athlete Evaluation, which is done by certified medical and technical experts to determine the athlete’s level of impairment on their ability to compete in a specific sport or event.

Miggels says most para-athletes can’t afford to travel for classification, which is done outside of the country.

“It’s very important for government and private companies to invest in para-sports because most athletes can’t compete on a higher level due to their inability to afford to travel outside the country for classification,” she added.

“It then makes it hard for them to compete internationally, even though our athletes do really well on the world stage – look at what we did at the Paralympics. 

“So, if we can get funding, it will make it easier for us to send even more athletes to international games because they would then have been classified.”

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