Canada is New Wheelchair Rugby World Champion

Wheelchair Rugby is known to be a "rough" sport and Canada fighting against USA for gold (© Bildbyrån)

On May 28, the Opening Ceremony of the Wheelchair Rugby World Championships was held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Directly thereafter, the first thrilling game between the ruling World Champion, USA, and the home nation, Sweden, was played. This started a long sequence of exciting Wheelchair Rugby games.

All in all, a total of 36 games took place. Some teams showed a lot of progress and development in their performance, eg, Belgium, who finished in 4th place with only seven players on their team. The Japanese team demonstrated yet another impressive performance of great speed and fighting spirit. Unfortunately, some teams had difficulties in reaching their “normal level”, for example Sweden and New Zealand. Both nations descended two positions on the world ranking list after the games. However, if one compares the pre-game ranking list with the final standing, all twelve teams ended up in different positions.

The Belgium and Australian teams fought for bronze and after more than an hour of uncompromising Wheelchair Rugby, Australia won 45:38. Already in their first battle, USA and Canada had a very close and tactic-packed game, with Canada finally leaving the court as the winner (22:23). In the final game, the “old enemies” had to try to defeat each other once again. The spectators followed an extremely close and thrilling game; with less than one minute to go and a score of 24:24, the US team had the ball in the Canadian zone, but instead of an American goal, there was a switch of roles, resulting in the US team chasing the ball and Canada dribbling and making the final score (25:24).