First gold for Belarus and another successful WRF Conference in Kiev: the Para-Rafting Commission's Members, technicians, coaches and athletes defined the Para-rafting rules.
Belarus is the first country that takes a gold in a WRF Para-Rafting Event, the competition that took place in Kiev, 4th-8th October 2018: a positive feedback for the 2019 Para-Rafting Worlds.
The competition showed many different aspects that has been analyzed by the WRF Para-Rafting Commission during the conference with several Para-Rafting athletes, keen to hear about future plans of their sport. Max Manfredi, italian member of the Paralympic Comittee, was one of them.
6 years ago he had an accident but now he paddles in the front-right of the Italian team and moreover Kiev was not his first international experience.
Indeed, before the amputation of the right tibia, he was a passionate high-level athlete of table tennis; after his surgery he discovered new worlds: "It is a new life. Someone says everything happens for a reason and I am not sorry for what happened to me: it seems it had to go in this way and I am happy with what I have now."
When he woke up in the hospital he saw a new opportunity: the Paralympic Games. 6 years have passed and since then he approached 6 other sports: in addiction to table tennis (at the moment he is the number 3 in Itlay) he practises at a competitive level, ice sledge hockey, sitting volley, windsurf, rafting and badminton "I am the italian numer 2 of single badminton and the Italian champion of double badminton: I have never heard of this sport before the accident and now I love it".
4 years ago he took part to the first Italian para-rafting team and since Kiev he is officially working with WRF in order to take our sport to the Paralympic Games.
In the Paralympic Committee physical, intellectual and visual disability are officially recognised. In Kiev there were teams composed only of the first two categories, but in the next months WRF Executive Board will approve the official para-rafting ones.
Photos of the event:
