Supporting Champions!

The weeks following the Global Games provide Virtus with a chance for reflection and planning as we launch into the next 4-year cycle to 2027. The past few years have seen some incredible successes with new events, new nations joining the Virtus family and new partnerships in sport, but we also saw some very difficult moments, most obviously the impact of the global pandemic and the cancellation of our planned programme in 2020 and 2021.

Virtus is a global organisation with limited resources yet we continue to punch above our weight delivering projects, new sports and forging new pathways for athletes with an intellectual impairment across the world. Our membership now stands at more than 90 nations – more than at any time in our past – and the rate of growth in the number of athletes increases each year.

We have recently delivered new multi-sport events including Regional Games in Asia/Oceania (2022) whilst the Americas Region who will host their first Games in 2026. We have grown the eligibility categories or ‘classifications’ in Virtus championships to create fairer competition for athletes with more profound or multiple impairments and launched a new classification group for athletes with autism – the first of its kind in the world. In doing so we have made elite sport more accessible to many millions more talented athletes around the world who would otherwise have missed out and never fulfilled their potential.

Virtus also now delivers across the largest number of sports in our history, with newer sports like karate, taekwondo, hockey, judo and sailing being added to some of the longer standing sports like athletics, tennis, swimming and skiing. We have been able to do this by forging successful partnerships with a number of the International Sports Federations, most recently World Karate.

But we could not do any of this without your help and we are immensely grateful for the support you give to Virtus. Over the coming year, Virtus will begin the process of reviewing its strategic plan and setting the goals for the period to 2028. This guides our work and ensures we are achieving the best possible impact and outcomes with the limited resources and finances we have available.

I very much hope that you will continue to follow and support us as we continue our journey and look forward to reporting on our further achievements soon.

The 6^th Virtus Global Games closed last week in Vichy-France, following a week of exceptional competition and sportsmanship.

These Games were the biggest in Virtus’ history, with the largest number of athletes contending the biggest ever medal-event programme. After the opening ceremony attended by President of the International Paralympic Committee Andrew Parsons in the exquisite Vichy Opera, competition began with early medals up for grabs in the swimming pool. Traditional Global Games sports including Basketball, Futsal, Athletics, and Tennis soon followed and there were Games debuts for Karate and Judo, whilst Handball appeared for the first time as a demonstration sport.

Nations including Kazakhstan enjoyed a phenomenal debut at the Games, with Dastan Ordabay winning four silver medals in Track-cycling. With around 45 nations in total, this was a truly Global event bringing together the world’s best athletes with an intellectual impairment.

The Table Tennis competition had a particular excitement this year as it had been chosen as a direct qualifier to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. After intense competition, Acer Ebru created history by becoming the first ever athlete with an Intellectual Impairment who will represent Turkey in Paris next year whilst in the men’s competition it was seventeen year old Chen-Po Yen who took the Paris slot.

The 6th edition represented the next part of the Virtus Global Games story. In the coming weeks we will know who will write the 7^th, as the hosts of the 2027 event are due to be announced soon.

For more stories from the Games, videos and photos, please visit the Virtus website or Games website and thankyou for your continual support for everything we do.