Year 9 Parkes student Blake Price will be swimming for Australia at an international event in Brisbane next month.
A Year 9 Parkes High School student will be swimming for Australia at an international event in Brisbane next month.
Blake Price will be competing at the Virtus Oceania Asia Games from 5th to 11th November in what he hopes is only the first of many opportunities to represent Australia.
Blake’s parents, Sharon and Chris Scott will be attending the games and supporting him at the huge event with about 1,000 athletes and officials from Asia, the Pacific and New Zealand.
Participants will be competing in athletics, badminton, basketball, cycling, judo, rowing, sailing, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis and triathlon.
The swimming has a jam-packed schedule of events with competition sanctioned by World Para Swimming for freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke and medleys.
Blake has been selected as an II3/S19 swimmer due to his diagnosis of Autism. This is the first time that S19 swimmers have been given the opportunity to be included as a full member of the Australian team and this event is the highest level of swimming that a S19 swimmer can presently achieve.
Blake has qualified to swim in eight individual events and team relay events. He had to achieve qualifying times for his events to be selected for the team.
Blake has put in many hours to prepare for the event. He has been training with Jason Montgomery of Parkes Athletic with up to eight sessions per week, and he travelled to Orange on weekends for swim training during the Winter season.
With the Parkes Pool opening last week, Blake is grateful to resume training with the Parkes Sharks Swimming club under the guidance of Coach Barbara Weaver.
Blake will join the Australian team in Brisbane on the 5th of November which is the day of the opening ceremony. Swimming events will be held from 7th to 9th November and the closing ceremony will be on 11th November. For the duration of the event Blake stays with the Australian team at their hotel.
The Virtus Oceania Asia Games 2022 is an international multi-sport competition in the Oceania Asia region for elite athletes with an intellectual impairment.
This will be the first time a Virtus Regional Games will be held for the Oceania Asia region, with hundreds of athletes and officials from Asia, the Pacific and New Zealand coming to Australia.