Contract signed for Brazilian Paralympic Training Centre

“It is a definitive step in the work that we are doing with our athletes

The afternoon of 2 August will be remembered as a significant date for the Brazilian Paralympic Movement - the day that the contract was signed for the construction of the first Brazilian Paralympic Training Centre.

The training center will be located in Sao Paulo and will house training facilities for 14 Paralympic sports. The signing event was held in Sao Paulo, at the State Secretary for the Rights of People with Disabilities, in the presence of several state authorities, such as State Secretary Linamara Rizzo Battistella, President of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee Andrew Parsons, boccia athletes Maciel Souza and Bruna Satie, track and field athletes Silvania Costa and Yohansson Nascimento, tennis player Maurício Pomme, and the chief director of Construtora OAS, the construction company that will build the project, Carlos Henrique Lemos.

Actual construction will begin next week and the training centre should be ready in 2015. In addition to serving as the training center to prepare Paralympic athletes for the 2016 Rio Games, the centre will also be one of Brazil’s Olympic legacies and provide an ongoing training facility for future generations of adapted Brazilian athletes.

The president of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (BPC), Andrew Parsons, said: “It is a definitive step in the work that we are doing with our athletes. It is a dream come.”

The construction of the first Paralympic Training Centre in Brazil was officially announced in January, in Sao Paulo, in the presence of Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, Andrew Parsons, and other authorities.

This pioneer project will be built in Parque Fontes do Ipiranga, in the south of Sao Paulo and is part of the Brazil Medals Plan, a project of the Ministry of Sports that will invest an additional BRL 1 billion (approx. EUR 324.5 million) in Brazilian sports between 2013 and 2016.

Starting with the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, the goal is to make Brazil one of the top performing countries in the world. After a seventh place in the London 2012 Paralympics, Brazil aims for a top five finish in the overall medal standing in 2016.

The training centre will provide indoor and outdoor sports facilities for training, competitions, athlete exchanges and will house the official teams of the following 14 Paralympic sports: athletics, wheelchair basketball, boccia, swimming, wheelchair fencing, 5-a-side football (visually impaired athletes), 7-a-side football (cerebral palsy athletes), goalball (visually impaired athletes), powerlifting, judo, wheelchair rugby, wheelchair tennis, table tennis and sitting volleyball. The centre will also feature lodging facilities with a dining room, laundry services and an administrative department with offices, meeting rooms, auditoriums and other support facilities.