2012 Paralympics was worth participating

Bishop Cornelius Adja Cofie has said, though Ghana failed to make the desired impact in the 2012 Paralympics Games, it was worth participating because it provided them a perfect learning platform.

He said his outfit has been exposed to very useful lessons that will be implemented to improve disable sports in the country, adding that those lessons will not have come if Ghana had not participated.

“I think we can improve from where we have gotten to, because we are going to develop more effective ways of developing and promoting disable sports in Ghana.

“There were several disciplines that Ghana could have easily competed and make an impact, because we have the talents in the country. All we need to do is to identify and groom them to compete.” He told the GNA Sports in an interview.

According to the NPC President, some of the disciplines are less expensive to develop and cited table tennis as a possible area for consideration.

He said, NPC will seek to diversify the disable sports to enable people in other categories of disability to participate in different disciplines.

Bishop Adja Cofie revealed that the lessons learnt from the 2012 Paralympics Games will help them develop a five year strategic plan for the development of disable sports in Ghana.

This he said will include talent identification and grooming, corporate partnership and the involvement of the media to promote disable sports.

He said the NPC will also partner other associations to involve disable sports in their activities as parts of the efforts to promote it.

Commenting on the general performance of Ghana, he said though the athletes failed to win medals, they gave their best under very compelling conditions.

“You will noticed that, in most of the disciplines, we were the only Africans there. We also competed against the very best in the world and put up our best.

“I think we have improved massively because we used to compete on wild cards but this time we came on board through competitive qualifiers. We have to work hard to improve upon the number of participants and aim at some medals next time”. Bishop Adja Cofie stated.

He called for the involvement of all stake holders in sports to promote disable sports in Ghana.