Sport give intellectual impaired athletes hope

Athletes with Down syndrome and athletes who are intellectually impaired, enjoyed the 25th award ceremony.

November 19, 2015

2 minutes read

Hylton Heggie, Tyrone Rademeyer and Peter Lundy (athletes) attended the 25th award ceremony of the South African Sports Association for the Intellectually Impaired.

SECUNDA – It has already been 25 years that the South African Association for the Intellectually Impaired (SASA-II,) has made athletes with Down syndromes’ dreams come true.

SASA-II focuses on athletes who are intellectually impaired, as well as athletes with Down syndrome.

This year, SASA-II celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Mpumalanga was the host of the annual games this year, as well as the 25-year-award ceremony.

SASA-II consists of two categories in which athletes take part.

The one is for athletes who are intellectually impaired and the second is for athletes with Down syndrome.

One of the athletes, Craig Groenewald, takes part in the intellectually impaired category.

He has already represented South Africa in swimming in Atlanta, New Zealand, Sydney, Argentina, Czech Republic, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Canada and Ecuador.

Craig received the award for 20 years’ outstanding performance in sport on the highest level.

He also broke 18 world records and won the prize for best male athlete in 2009 at the Global Games.

Hannes-Walt de Klerk is an athlete with Down syndrome.

He has what is known as mosaicism Down syndrome.

When a person has more than one type of chromosomal makeup, that is called mosaicism, like the mosaic style of art in which a picture is made up of different colours of tiles.

In Down syndrome, mosaicism means that some cells of the body have trisomy 21, and some have the typical number of chromosomes.

Both Hannes-Walt and Craig received prizes for outstanding performance in sport by representing South Africa at more that five world championships.

Hannes-Walt does not only swim, but also take part in javelin throw, 100m and shot put.

Although he takes part in athletics, he says that he enjoys swimming the most.

Taking part in sports give these athletes hope.

In an interview with the Ridge Times, Hannes-Walt said he works for the Amelia Day Care Centre.

“I would also like to teach children the right way to swim.

“There is a swim school called Learn to Swim, and I would like to work there and help other children,” said Hannes-Walt.