Developing towards integration and combine professional and adapted sports. This is the main objective of this meeting ‘Sports for everyone. Nothing which may stop you’, organised by the Divina Pastora Foundation and the Divina Partora Chair for Adapted Sports in the Universitat de València, celebrated this morning in the Universitat’s pavilion.
Adapted sports players Gabi Calvo, Power Chair Hockey Player; Raquel Mateu, member of the sports commission and women at the Spanish Royal Table Tennis Federation and Pablo Cantero, member of the Spanish team of athletics in 60m, 100m, 200m, longitude have debated today with Javi Juego and Lucas Orban, players of the Valencia FC on the state and evolution of adapted sports in Spain.
During the forum, all three sports players from the Divina Pastora Chair for Adapted Sports at the Universitat de València, explained how the see adapted sports nowadays and have shared their experiences with the Valencian players. ‘Adapted Sports need more visibility. We have to achieve an equilibrium and eliminate the differences existing within sports’, indicated Raquel Mateu. For its part, Javi Fuego and Lucas Orban have highlighted the ‘huge effort and sacrifice’ of adapted sports players who fight, every day, to fulfil their objectives. ‘They are an example for us. They are not only examples of sports players, but also o people, of real fighters’ claimed Lucas Orban. One of these examples of overcoming is the Paralympic athlete Pablo Cantero: ‘I want to leave a mark in sports and open up a door so that everyone wants to practice, because sports help escaping any situation. Obstacles do not matter. With the courage and education I was given, they can all be overcome. Javi Fuego, Valencia CF midfielder, has shown its admiration for the Chair’s athletes. ‘As professional players, we should acquire the values of adapted sports’, claimed the player, who added that this type of solidary acts ‘fulfil us because we contribute to giving them more repercussion’. Lastly, Gabi Calvo, power chair hockey player, highlighted that his objective is wining the European Championship and claimed how sports practice helps him overcoming his problems day by day.
Universal Values
The day also counted with the presence of Manuel Peris, counsellor of the Valencia CF and Juan Cruz Sol, member of the Council’s assessing committee; Esteban Morcillo, Principal of the Universitat de València; Ramón López, vice-principal of Teaching Quality; Pilar Nieto Sub-Director-General of the Corporative Divina Pastora Isurance; Rosa Laparra, manager of the Foundation Divina Pastra and José Campos, director of the Divina Pastora Chair for Adapted Sports at the Universitat de València, as well as athletes and members of different entities related to adapted sports.
Sub-Director-General of the Corporative Divina Pastora, Pilar Nieto, highlighted the need of joining professional and adapted sports to ‘advancing towards integration and stepping for inclusive sports’. For Nieto, ‘Personal overcoming, sacrifice, team-work, responsibility and comradeship are common to all athletes because sports values are universal. It does not make a difference between physical or intellectual conditions’.
In this sense, it was reminded how betting for a sport without differences took the Divina Pastora Foundation to create in 2011, along with the Physical Education and Sports Service of the Universitat de València, the Divina Pastora Chair for Adapted Sports in Spain. This Chair is aimed at training and researching on adapted sports through the organisation of activities, projects and conferences.
