IPC Reveals April’s Athlete of the Month Shortlist

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has announced its shortlist for April’s Athlete of the Month award, and the public can now vote for the winner via the poll on the www.paralympic.org homepage.

The finalists include:

Stephane Houdet (France): Wheelchair Tennis player Houdet beat world No. 1 and defending champion Maikel Scheffers in the men's singles final of the Florida Open to complete a three week unbeaten period in USA, following up his ITF 1 Series titles at the Cajun Classic and the Pensacola Open.

Itzhak Mamistvalov (Israel): Set two unofficial world records at the British Open Swimming Championships in Sheffield in the 100m Freestyle and 200m Freestyle S1. Ironically he beat his own records set in the same pool almost four years ago.

Terezhinha Guilhermina (Brazil): Set an unofficial 200m T11 world record of 24.67 seconds at the Abierto Mexicano Athletics competition. Her time was 0.07 seconds faster than the record she set at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships.

David Weir (Great Britain): The wheelchair racer showed why he will be one of the athletes to beat at London 2012 winning a record sixth London Marathon, equalling the record set by Tanni Grey Thompson. The field he beat was one of the strongest yet.

Shelly Woods (Great Britain): Made it a double British success beating a quality field to win her second London Marathon. She had previously won the event in 2007.

Josh Cassidy (Canada): Beat Australia’s Kurt Fearnley to win the Boston Marathon in a course-record time. Six days later he competed in the London Marathon however injury meant he could only finish ninth.

The public now has until 12:00 (CET) on 10 May to vote for which athlete or team it thought had the best performance last month on the para-sport scene.

So far this year all three monthly winners have come from Russia. They include nordic skiers Roman Petushkov and Nikolay Polukhin as well as wheelchair curler Oksana Slesarenko.