IPC reveals athletics Ones to Watch list for 2013 season

With just over five months to go until the 2013 IPC Athletics World Championships here’s a list of the top athletes to keep your eyes on. 28 Feb 2013

A picture of women on a podium with medals around their neck

France's Marie-Amelie Le Fur, the Netherlands' Marlou van Rhijn and USA's April Holmes are all on the IPC's Ones to Watch list after completing the podium for the 100m T44 race at London 2012.

ⒸGetty Images

By IPC

The complete list of Ones to Watch for athletics can be found here.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) on Thursday (27 February) revealed its Ones to Watch list for athletics ahead of the 2013 IPC Athletics World Championships to take place later this year in Lyon, France.

The Ones to Watch initiative identifies some of the top athletes around the world who are medal contenders in their events in order to help raise their profiles in the lead-up to the World Championships and other major events.

The athletics Ones to Watch list consists of 35 athletes, including London 2012 Paralympic gold medallists Jonnie Peacock, David Weir, Alan Oliveira, Johanna Benson, Marlou van Rhijn and Tatyana McFadden.

Peacock and Weir are already household names across Great Britain after racing to Paralympic titles in front of 80,000 spectators at London’s Olympic Stadium last summer. Peacock won the 100m T44 race and Weir won four golds in the 500m, 800m, 1,500m and marathon T54 events.

Oliveira is quickly becoming Brazil’s poster boy for the Rio 2016 Games after grabbing 200m T44 gold in London, while Benson is on the shortlist for a Laureus World Sport Award after winning Namibia’s first Paralympic gold on the track last year in the 200m T37 event.

Van Rhijn of the Netherlands could be the next big name on the track after storming to Paralympic gold in the 200m T44 and USA’s McFadden has already established herself as a racer to watch for years to come by winning three golds in the T54 class in London.

The complete list of Ones to Watch for athletics can be found here.

Ones to watch athletes profiles on Paralympic.org will make up an information hub that includes their achievements, biographies, latest news, images and video footage. A number of other activities will also be implemented across social media in a concerted effort to boost the profiles of these athletes and make them household names for years to come.”

Craig Spence, IPC Director of Media and Communications, said: “The Ones to Watch section proved immensely popular with international media during London 2012, and as a result will now be expanded to cover further para-sport events.

“It gives me a great pleasure to be able to showcase this great mixture of emerging talent and experienced competitors in IPC Athletics. Most of them are Paralympic champions and world-record holders who will participate at the 2013 IPC Athletics World Championships in Lyon, France.”

The IPC’s Ones to Watch campaign launched in the lead-up to London 2012, when a new section was included within Paralympic.org, entitled Ones to Watch. This series of pages was designed to raise the profiles of leading medal contenders

in Paralympic sports and act as an essential media resource.

At London 2012, the IPC worked with Samsung to launch an innovative project that involved the Ones to Watch athletes called Samsung Bloggers. Athletes recorded video blogs from behind the scenes during the Paralympics and by the end of the Paralympics the blogs had received over 350,000 views.

For more information on IPC Athletics, please click here.