Nottwil 2017: 10 things you need to know

If you are missing the excitement World Para Athletics Championships at London 2017 there is another huge competition coming to fill the London-shaped hole in your life. The first World Para Athletics Junior Championships get underway later this week in Nottwil, Switzerland. Here are ten things you should know before the competition kicks off on 3 August.

1. It will be the first edition of the Junior Worlds.

2. Nottwil, a scenic town with easy access to road and rail links around Switzerland, is located in the centre of Switzerland, only 20km away from the famous city of Lucerne.

3. A total of 275 athletes and 11 guide runners from 41 National Paralympic Committees are set to compete in Nottwil.

4. Twenty-nine athletes competed earlier this month in the World Para Athletics Championships London 2017.

5. One of the big names in Nottwil will be South Africa’s Ntando Mahlangu, who won silver at Rio 2016 and London 2017, and holds the world record of 52.61 in the 400m T42.

6. Turkey’s 19-year-old Onur Kopuzlu, born on 1 January 1998, is the oldest athlete set to compete in Nottwil, while India’s 13-year-old Shalini Chaudhary, born on 29 November 2003, is the youngest.

7. One of the most experienced athletes will be Chile’s Amanda Cerna, who already competed at one Paralympic Games, two World Championships and one Parapan American Games.

8. Nottwil’s Sport Arena is located in the grounds of the Swiss Paraplegics Centre and on the shores of Lake Sempach.

9. The eight-lane track is a well-established venue in the Para athletics calendar, having staged the World Para Athletics Grand Prix series numerous times.

10. The Netherlands’ T43 sprinter, world and Paralympic champion Marlou van Rhijn, and Canada’s T53 wheelchair racer, world and Paralympic champion Brent Lakatos are some of the many athletes who set world records on this track.