MADRID, 28 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former athlete and winner of nine Olympic gold medals, Carl Lewis, and the Paralympic swimmer and Princess of Asturias Award for Sports 2021, Teresa Perales, acted as luxury ambassadors this Thursday at the Night of Inclusive Sports, a gala organized by the Sanitas Foundation in Madrid.
The Aragonese swimmer, who showed her admiration for the former American athlete, highlighted the importance of inclusive sport and added that, although “before it was necessary to explain what it was, now it is no longer necessary.” Perales also indicated that the road ahead is long and there can be no relaxation in a sport that until recently “was unknown.”
“Before we didn’t have a space to practice sports, nobody wanted to share with us and, suddenly, we started talking about inclusive sport. Children already start listening to it from the school stage. We have a long way to go and we have to enjoy it” , he pointed.
Lewis, who listened carefully to Perales’ words, recognized that he does not conceive of sport in any other way than “inclusive” because “it is part of the constant evolution that a healthy society must experience”, at the same time that he highlighted the figure of his family in his sports career.
Two luxury ambassadors who, after their speeches, gave way to the delivery of distinctions. The president of the Higher Sports Council, José Manuel Franco; the general secretary of the Spanish Olympic Committee, Victoria Cabezas, and the president of the Spanish Paralympic Committee, Miguel Carballeda, presented the awards to thirteen federations for their work in inclusive sport.
In this sense, the president of the CSD highlighted sport as “the best ambassador that Spain can have”, at the same time that he recognized that inclusive sport “is an example for Spanish society”. For his part, Cabezas pointed out that with inclusive sports “we take a step beyond what sport itself is.”
“Being able to materialize all the work in the Inclusive Games (organized by Sanitas) is making the dream of many people come true. Sport is intercultural and international and I believe that with the Inclusive Games we take a step beyond what sport itself is” , pointed out the general secretary of the COE.
Meanwhile, Miguel Carballeda thanked the work carried out by Sanitas and recalled that people with disabilities “have the same rights as other people”. “I am blind and I have a son with Down Syndrome, we want things to change. We deserve it because we have the same rights as other people. Sanitas makes our lives better and that is not just anything,” he said.
During the gala there was also a demonstration of an inclusive judo match between the Olympic athlete Alberto Gaitero and the Paralympic runner-up in Tokyo Sergio Ibáñez. An inclusive table tennis exhibition match was also held between the Olympic medalist Maria Xiao and the five-time Paralympic medalist, José Manuel Ruiz, who pointed out that “what makes you play or not is the sporting level, neither the age nor the disability”.
Finally, the gala closed the night with a 3X3 wheelchair basketball match between the team led by former Real Madrid player Felipe Reyes with Jazmín Sallis and Gregg Warburton and the team led by former Spanish national team player Amaya Valdemoro with Terry Bywater and Sara Revuelta, who highlighted the difficulty of a sport dominated by men. “There are very few girls in this sport and being able to compete with boys is very difficult, you have to train to reach their level and be able to compete with them,” she concluded.