Greg Polychronidis: Great Britain have raised the bar

Greece’s Greg Polychronidis attended the Boccia test event in the Basketball Arena on the Olympic Park in May where he saw first hand how strong the British team had become. 13 May 2012
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Grigoris Polychronidis

Greece's Grigoris Polychronidis is one of Greece's most well-known summer Paralympians

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By IPC

"The individuals competition, in which I won gold on a tie-breaker, also showed the hunger of all competitors to win and showed that there will be tough battles in the individual knock out matches."

The level of Boccia competitors is higher than ever before, and that was proven at the Boccia test event that was held at London’s Basketball Arena from 5 to 7 May.

After having the friendly game against Jacob Thomas in Greece in April, I knew that the British had finally got a strong BC3 team. What I did not expect was that all British BC3s would be that strong and that they would win the pairs’ competition.

But it was not only them! Belgium and Canada showed that they had done a lot of work and aimed for the top as well.

Actually I can say that if you add these teams to Korea, Portugal and Spain – who have traditionally been strong - plus the 2011 World Cup champion, Greece, and the always dangerous Thailand, we can see that every game at Paralympics will be 50-50, and no one can guess who will be the next Paralympic champion.

The individuals competition, in which I won gold on a tie-breaker, also showed the hunger of all competitors to win and showed that there will be tough battles in the individual knock out matches.

Regarding the test event competition I can say that we had no real problems, except that we had too many games each day, and of course I would have prefer to play in ExCeL, the venue where Boccia is going to be played during Paralympics.

The organizing staff were a little bit anxious in their attempt for perfection.

I liked that a lot, and I hope they achieve their goal of having the best Paralympics and of course Boccia competition ever!