Special Olympics National Games Held in Belmopan

Candy Armstrong

Today the 2014 Special Olympics National Games were held in Belmopan. It was a culmination of local and regional games in which athletes from across the country had the opportunity to shine in a variety of disciplines, including track and field. It’s an important event which highlights the achievements and capacity of youths living with disabilities. News Five has some footage of the event, courtesy our friends at Plus Television.

Candy Armstrong, Chairperson, Board of Directors, Special Olympics Belize

“It gives both our children and youths with intellectual disabilities an opportunity to develop in a holistic way, it builds them spiritually, mentally, physically and psychologically. Very importantly in events like these it is the community and family involvement, so if you look around you will see it is a lot of families, friends and members of the community supporting the athletes. So that’s very important. Also a part of our national games, we have health screening for our athletes and if you look around you will see stations that our Medical Doctors are and so athletes get an opportunity to be screened in terms of dental, vision and general BMI like their heart, weight, height. So again this event is multifaceted in terms of approach and benefits as I said they get an opportunity to conduct health screening that is available right here which might have been a little bit challenging depending on where they were and again they get an opportunity to engage and compete not only with themselves but in unified sports and other athletes from throughout thecountry.”

The games today are in the category of ‘unified sports,’ which means that athletes with disabilities are partnered with athletes without disabilities.