Tension building up in the city of Brisbane as the first Virtus Oceania Asia Games 2022 is just three days away. Apart from being the inaugural games for the OA region, here are the top five things which are going to make this multi-sport event even more special-

1. Eligibility & Classification workshop

A workshop for the OA region will be held in Brisbane on 3rd November. The workshop will be delivered by Prof Jan Burns, Head of Eligibility from Virtus and Dr Suzie Lemmey, Classifier for II athletes. The aim of this workshop is to introduce the concepts of eligibility and classification in Parasport and how this works for athletes with intellectual impairment. It will also describe the Paralympic pathways from recreational to elite sport. The workshop will also introduce the roles of a classifier and how to become one.

2. Legacy of INAS Global Games in the medals of OA Games

The Royal Australian Mint produced the OA Games 2022 Medals, continuing their legacy and partnership in growing inclusion through sport. The two sides of the medals tell two different stories. On one side the gum leaves from the Global Games 2019 medals can be seen carrying the legacy of the games (designed by Bronwyn Scottand) and on the other side with the line drawing of the Brisbane River (designed by Aaron Baggio).

The gum blossom signifies resilience and strength in Australia. In times of drought, floods and even the intensity of the harsh Australian sun, the gum blossom stays resilient and strong, with bright and colourful blossoms.

“It is an important feature of the OA Games 2022 Medal to include the inspiration from Australia’s floral icon the Gum Blossom to represent the athletes – their strength, their courage, and their ability to overcome barriers to flourish against the odds,” said Ms Smith.

3. International sports summit

The International Sports Summit will be held on the 4th and 5th of November Athletics the Brisbane City Hall.  It will bring leaders of the global sports community together in one room to share their insights on how things are done in major international sporting events and talk about the opportunities to join the decade of action towards Brisbane 2032. The three key themes to be focused on during the summit are Sport for Development and Peace, Women in Sport Leadership and Green & Gold Runway to Brisbane 2032 and beyond.

The guest speakers and the panellist for the summit consists of-

• Robyn Smith OAM, CEO of Sport Inclusion Australia, Virtus Vice President and IPC Governing Board Member at Large, Member-elect Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games Brisbane 2032. AUSTRALIA
• Mr Andrew Liveris AO, President Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organising Committee
• Ms Baklai Temengil, Vice-President of the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC).  PALAU
• Dr Catherine Carty, UNESCO Chair Manager.   IRELAND
• Mr Stephen Frost, CEO of Included.  UNITED KINGDOM
• Barry Holman, Virtus Secretary General, Founder and CEO Athletes Without Limits. UNITED STATES
• Mr Anthony Ryan, CEO of Brisbane Economic Development Agency
• Mr Duane Kale, Vice President of the International Paralympic Committee
• Ms Emma Thomas, CEO of Sunshine Coast Regional Council
• Ms Fiona Allan, Chief Executive and Secretary General of Paralympics New Zealand
• Mr Kieran Perkins, CEO of the Australian Sports Commission
• Ms Melissa King, Chief Executive Officer at FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup 2022
• Mr Paul Bird, President of the Oceania Paralympic Committee

4. Athletes from new member nations to debut

Virtus continues to welcome new members to our familyand we are delighted that three will be making their debut at the OA Games: Fiji, Soloman Islands and Maldives.

5. Lorri 

The Global Games 2019 mascot – LORRI will be returning to Brisbane city as the mascot for the 2022 OA Games. Lorri is our favourite inclusion champion and will be flying down from Mt Coot-tha.

Story of Lorri– When Lorri was growing up she played with all the other lorikeets, and as her feathers started to develop, Lorri realised she had a different pattern under her wings and a cool-looking mark on her chest. Refusing to be ‘pigeonholed’ as different, Lorri embraced her individuality and would show off her wings whenever she welcomed people, and her friends all loved it. They actually suit Lorri’s outgoing personality, she has quite the larrikin spirit. Because of her wings, she loves to change people’s perceptions of ‘the different’.

Intellectual impairment is an invisible disability which makes it difficult for people to understand the problems people who are affected by it have in their daily life.

Imagine spending hours and days learning a particular skill today and forgetting how to perform it tomorrow, or not being able to tell people that you forgot what they told you a few hours ago. Maybe its difficult to understand or fill out a simple form without getting help from someone else. These are just a few issues athletes with intellectual impairment might face each day.

Whilst athletes with physical or sensory impairments are often able to communicate and make people understand what they need help with, people with an intellectual impairment often find it more difficult to communicate problems, to share their feelings or ask for help, which can affect their performance.

Virtus Ambassador and Paralympic champion, Jessica-Jane Applegate has been advocating and raising awareness of intellectual impairment for more than a decade now. Jessica was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a form of autism – when she was in secondary school. Talking to various newspapers and TV channels, Jessica-Jane shared her daily struggles on many occasions. She shared how she really struggles with day-to-day things such as understanding training sets, reading sessions, reading a pace clock and remembering technique.

‘I forget what I’d learned to do the day before and I have poor concentration. I forget equipment or misplace it and cannot always communicate well. This is why I am in the classification of S14 (swimmer with an intellectual impairment) and race against the other S14s. We all have the same problems.’

“I get confused and frustrated easily but it works both ways. Sometimes I’m frustrated because I can’t explain what I mean and other times I have no idea what people are trying to tell me. This affects me on a daily basis and I am very lucky to have such a supportive team around me.”

Applegate added: “I and my mum are really close. We do loads of stuff together and she does so much for me. From all the driving, my website, my bookings, my paperwork, my race entries, everything really. I love her, my dogs and my geckos so much.”

Jessica was born with several underdevelopments, the main one was a tube in the larynx where she was very sick with breathing problems for several years. One of her legs is shorter than the other one and it also has a hole in the bone, and the athlete already had many surgeries on that leg since she was a child.

“Jess has had lots of operations on her feet. Throughout her whole childhood and adulthood, she has had many surgeries. Literally, nine weeks before competing in Rio, she had throat surgery. Several weeks before the London Paralympics she had surgery. It has just been her whole life. We don’t know any different. When you are in that environment, and you see it that way, you get used to it and I wouldn’t want to change her for anything” Jessica’s mother – Dawn Applegate told IPC.

She also has femoral retroversion and all of these additional health conditions make training harder for the swimmer to train.

Bronze Medallist Jessica-Jane Applegate GBR from Tokyo 2020 P.C- OIS

“I have femoral retroversion (positional deformity) in just one hip so I have really struggled to
do the breaststroke technique as it has to be simultaneous. And with uneven legs, one hip that turns in when the other doesn’t, restricted movement in my dorsiflex (bending the foot upwards) but hypermobility (large range of movement) in my ankle, it’s been a huge challenge.”

Jessica considers her coach Alex Pinniger as a father figure to her, who not only trains her but also ensure that they stay connected pre and post-events. She said, “Most of the time Alex and I get on brilliantly. He always says he doesn’t get stressed but he does – he just won’t admit it, ha! Sometimes we argue but we always talk things through. He is very understanding.’

“My whole pool training and gym schedule is a set routine which then leads to everything else being a routine.

“I have a race plan which my coach and I will go through over and over again until I remember it and I also have some prompt cards made up just to remind me of what I should be doing.”

Fighting and surviving through all the adversities in her life, Jessica has already won two gold, two silver and three bronze at the Paralympic Games and 38 international medals altogether, but she says she is not done yet.

“It’s really nice to do something that you enjoy as well as get medals along the way”

Jessica shares a very special message for the young athletes who looks unto her-

“Just keep going and as long as you enjoy it, keep doing what you love and hard work always pays off and you never know what’s around the corner because things will just keep going and the more you enjoy it the more you will keep doing it, and things will just toss by and you might just end up like me”

Understanding barriers and enablers towards physical activity is an essential first step to developing interventions and increasing activity levels of people with intellectual disabilities. Virtus Academy manager Dr. Debbie Van Biesen along with her team of researchers recently published a paper where they investigated the correlates of physical activity in people with intellectual disability.

“I and my colleagues performed a review of all existing literature and identified that the three most consistent correlates of physical activity were age, the presence of more severe ID and the presence of physical mobility problems,” said Dr Debbie.

A total of 83 PA correlates were identified, retrieved from 39 studies with a total involvement of 26,456 participants with ID.  A correlation was considered consistent if it was reported in four or more studies.

“Despite the abundance of evidence of the PA benefits for people with ID, we only found consistent evidence for three correlates reliably being related to PA in adults with ID. More research, particularly among young and older people is urgently needed.” Dr. Debbie added. 

As more severe intellectual disability and the presence of physical health problems were found to be important barriers to being active in adults with intellectual disability, this study is supporting the II-2 class (athletes with an intellectual disability and significant additional impairment) development within Virtus Sports Competitions.

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It is well known that intellectual impairment affects people differently. For some people, it means they might struggle to remember things, but for others it can be a very different experience.

Tennis player Andriana Petrakis from Australia is one such person who is blessed with an amazing memory which, with her autism, helps her remember even the smallest details.

“She remembers peoples’ names, people’s birthdays with the exact year, and registration numbers of cars, she is very good at navigation too,” said Andriana’s mother.

While Andriana’s memory retention is a gift, it can put a lot of pressure on the athlete.

“There is information everywhere around us. And because Andriana can remember things very easily, her brain gets overwhelmed from time to time with all the information she acquires from her surroundings. We started hiding magazines and newspapers from her and also limited her television time so that she doesn’t get exposed to too much information” says her mother.

Andriana was diagnosed with autism when she was twenty-two months old. This is a condition which means that people might see the world around us differently, might find it harder to communicate and find loud noise and light overwhelming. Her parents practised having eye contact with her as she was not looking at them while talking. She did a lot of occupational therapy and speech therapies. Andriana’s younger sister played tennis, which motivated her to give it a try the sport and soon fell in love with the sport. Later, she started playing tennis as an alternative to her occupational therapy.

“There was not much help twenty years ago for children with Autism. We talked to many different people looking for help, took Andriana for early interventions, etc. She didn’t start talking until she was five and a half or six years; her first word was ‘bubble’” said Andriana’s mother.

“Andriana had her routine since she was a child, and it took us a while to adjust to her schedule but afterwards it was very easy for us to take care of Andriana than my other two children. She was always very positive, she keeps the family grounded.”

Talking about her positivity, Andriana’s mother told Virtus how she never gets disappointed even if she loses a match and feels proud of herself for playing well and never cries.

Andriana is also a tennis/pickleball coach with South Australia’s first disability sports organization registered with the NDIS. She trains young children with autism and learning disabilities. In 2020, Andriana won the ‘Most Outstanding Athlete with a Disability Award.

Andriana is supported by Sport Inclusion Australia.

The finals of the Women’s II1 Table Tennis match couldn’t have been more thrilling.

At the Virtus European Summer Games, in Cracow Poland, 20-year-old Ebru Acer from Turkey defeated the ITTF World no.1 Lea Ferney with 3-2 result. What a fantastic debut performance by the Turkish player.

Ebru was playing an attacking game from the first set and took a lead by 2-1 in the first two sets, putting pressure on Lea. However, the French made a terrific comeback in the fourth set and pushed the game into the final deciding match.

The Tokyo Paralympic medalist took a lead in the fifth match with 5-1, and the cheering audience from the French team added to the pressure on Ebru. But, Ebru brought back her ace game and took away the Gold from the world champion.

“I am extremely happy today and proud to win this medal for my country. I defeated my toughest opponents today “

Ebru dedicated her medal to the president of Virtus turkey for all his support.