Turkey aims more athletes to participate at Paris 2024 Paralympic Games: Erdoğan

ANKARA

Turkey has already begun intensive work to participate in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games with more athletes than it did in Tokyo, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, expressing his expectation that Turkish disabled athletes will make a big success at the next games.

“We have already started our work for Paris 2024. I believe we will break another record, both in terms of the number of athletes and medals,” Erdoğan said at the Ceremony for the Distribution of Sports Equipment to Special Education Institutions on May 12 in Ankara.

The event was jointly organized by the Education Ministry and Youth and Sports Ministry in a bid to supply sports equipment and other materials to the special education institutions across the country for use by disabled students and athletes.

Thanks to the government’s works over the past 20 years, the number of disabled athletes increased from 2,763 to 45,441, Erdoğan said, recalling that Turkey had sent only one athlete to the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000.

“Twenty years later in Tokyo 2020, we have participated in the games with 87 athletes who won 15 medals in total; two gold, four silver and nine bronze medals,” he said, “After Tokyo, we will return with even more victories than from Paris.”

“We see what our disabled athletes can achieve when they are given essential support and opportunities. We hope they will make us feel much prouder in future sports tournaments,” he stated.

The government will continue to lend financial support to the sports federation of disabled athletes, Erdoğan said.