The Croatian Paralympic Committee and the Croatian Paralympic Swimming Federation have organized the Open Paralympic Swimming Championship of Croatia – Croatia Open 2019, which will be held in Split on February23 and 24 at the Poljud pool, reports Dalmacija Danas on February 21, 2019.
The competition will feature 102 competitors from five countries. While Croatia boasts 78 swimmers from 10 clubs, there is one swimmer from Montenegro, 17 swimmers from Slovenia, three swimmers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and three swimmers from Austria.
“The Croatia Open is held as part of our preparations for the world championships which was supposed to be held in Malaysia, but unfortunately was canceled three weeks ago for political reasons, so we are waiting for a new host to be named. We want to check out the current form of the team in Split because in this period we had to change our participants in some of the other competitions we wanted to play. In April, I travel to America with Dino Sinovčić and Ante Rađa. In May, we will play in Lignan, Italy, and in mid-June, we will head to the Open Championship of Germany,” said Slobodan Glavčić, the coach of the Croatian national Paralympic swimming team ahead fo the tournament in Split.
“Of course, it is hard to predict, but for the world championship, we are preparing for a Dino Sinovčić medal and for Kristijan Vincetić to fight for a medal, as well as Ante Rađa and the standard for the world championship, Leonard Renić. I hope that this year we will preserve the trend of winning medals on the world’s largest Paralympic swimming stage. Our swimmers have matured, and I certainly need to mention Tomi Brajša and Karlo Knežević. Behind them comes another seven or eight young swimmers who are seriously knocking on the doors of the national team,” said coach Glavčić.
The organizers of the Championship are PK Cipal and PK Mornar and the Sports Federation for the Disabled in Split.
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