The Divina Pastora Chair of Adapted Sports Award is annually called since 2013 in all of the Spanish territory. Specifically in the present edition, three Valencian works ─two of them of the UV─ have been recognised.

The first prize of the doctoral programme category was for Ana María Ferri of the Faculty of Physical Activity and Sports Science of the Universitat de València for her thesis ‘Determination of the levels of physical activity in paraplegics wheelchair users’, tutored by professors Luis-Millán González and María Pilar Serra. The second prize was for María Campayo from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche for her doctoral thesis titled ‘Test battery for the optimization of the classification process of football players with hypertonia, ataxia and athetosis’, directed by Professor Raúl Reina. The prize for the Master’s Degree Final Project was for Javier Monforte from the Universitat de València for his study ‘The Anabasis of Patrick. A personal, dialogic and visual story about cancer, spinal cord injury and physical exercise’, tutored by professor Victor Manuel Pérez.

The excellent scientific, academic and researcher level of the winner works was determinant for the jury, as well as the sensitivity when it came to the treatment of the study subjects. A quality supported by the research of María Campayo, for example. Her thesis’ conclusions established a protocol to describe profiles and they will be applied in the new regulations of football classification for people with cerebral palsy.

The award ceremony act took place in the Faculty of Physical Activity and Sports Science of the Universitat de València and was presided by the Vice-Principal for Internationalisation and Cooperation Guillermo Palau, who pointed out the “effort made by young researchers and by the Divina Pastora Chair of Adapted Sports of the Universitat”, as well as the support shown by the Public Administration and by the Divina Pastora Foundation in order to improve and promote the study of adapted sports in the university.

The Vice-Principal was accompanied by Hermenegildo Puchades, representing the General Direction of Sports of the Valencian Government, who recognised that “thanks to these research works”, the Administration can “improve the adapted sports management”. He was also accompanied by the deputy director of Corporative Responsibility of Divina Pastora, Pilar Nieto, who spread out her recognition for all the presented works “because of their research rigidity and its sensitivity”. Lastly, there was also the director of the Divina Pastora Chair of the Universitat de València, José Campos, who defended the role of the Chair as a needed way to keep on working on adapted sports.

The act also counted with the presence of the Sociology professor of the Universitat de València Ramón Llopis, who gave the conference ‘Adapted Sports in Spanish Universities’. Llopis presented a study whose aim is to analyse the situation of the adapted sports in the Spanish universities through a survey to 83 public and privated academic institutions. After exposing the obtained data during his study, Professor Ramón Llopis concluded that this is a “stagnation” situation. “We have proved the existence of impediments in the adapted sports in the Spanish university system, as well as the perception of sport practice as a key element to entirely train university students or the need to design action plans that develop adapted sports, not only in terms of budget but also in in terms of equality and social inclusion”.

The Divina Pastora Chair plans to call the fifth edition of it awards in the next months. Those will have national impact as well.