Novi Sad, Serbia hosted the inaugural Para-Karate European Championship where these differently abled athletes joined the professional athletes in taking part at the 53rd European Senior Championships which has laid the foundation for more and more plans for regional Para-Karate tournaments to come up as the first edition of this continental Para-Karate tournament came to an end.
44 Para-Karateka from 14 nations took part at the event. This is a substantial achievement in organising such a fixture for the first time and the World Karate Federation is hopeful that in time to come these fixtures would gather momentum and see improved participation from the para-karateka fraternity.
The Para-Karateka competed under 3 main categories as prescribed by the World Karate Federation under general Para-Karate tournament regulations. They are the “Wheelchair Users”, “Visually Impaired” and “Intellectually Impaired” categories.
Karate nations such as Russia and Serbia who have since recently been showing prominent presence in the world karate arena were among the countries with the highest numbers of participants, along with Germany and Romania.
Para-karateka from Germany, Wales, France, Hungary, Spain, Romania and Serbia topped the points table.
With these developments in the Para-karate segment of the sport and its reaching the regional levels of championships, other regions too have embarked on bringing this segment into their championships and hence Sri Lanka also will soon start making preparations to train para-karateka for these championships.
