Roll up roll up for boccia

The point of this column is to draw attention to those sports which either belong exclusively to the Paralympics or have been heavily adapted from existing Olympic events and other sports for the participation of disabled athletes.  

Boccia falls into the first category, being one of only three Paralympic sports that have no direct counterpart in the Olympic Games, the other two being the field event known as club, and goalball, the sport which was invented to be played specifically by blind people.

Duncan Tunbridge, Sport Operations Manager at ParalympicsGB, describes boccia as a “target ball based game specially adapted for people with severe disabilities”. It has similarities to games such as boules and petanque.

Under the international classification system, boccia players are divided into four categories (BC 1-4) which follow the traditional system of the lower the number, the more severe the impairment is deemed to be. Players from the lowest categories use ramps to aid them in getting the balls onto the court.

It is played on an indoor court similar in size to a volleyball court, with leather balls that contain plastic granules so that they roll but do not bounce. A white jack ball is thrown first, and then the side whose ball is not closest to the jack throws until they get a ball closest or until they run out of balls. Once all the balls have been thrown one side receives points for every ball they have closer to the jack than their opponent’s closest ball.

GB’s leading boccia light is veteran thrower Nigel Murray, who with three Paralympic and four world championship medals is one of the team’s most successful ever players.

Murray took individual gold at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000 and in the team event in 2008 in Beijing, as well as picking up a silver medal at the last Games in the individual competition.

However, Duncan says that ahead of the 2012 Games, the Great Britain side is looking strong across the board in terms of potential medal prospects.

He says: “If the world rankings equated to medals, David Smith in the BC1 is ranked 4th in the world, so would just miss out, Nigel Murray in the 2s who is number 1 would have gold, and Stephen McGuire who’s ranked number 3 in the world in BC4 would have bronze. In the team event GB is currently second in the world and current Paralympic champions.

“At the moment we’re looking pretty strong across three of the four classes, we have high ranking individuals in each class. The ramp events we are slightly weaker in, but we’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into working with those guys to get them up to international standard and we’re making good progress.”

He says that, historically, Portugal and Spain have been very strong competitors on the world stage but that new countries are emerging as boccia forces.

“Brazil have proved to be strong in the 4s of late,” he says, while new world countries such as Korea, China, Hong Kong and Thailand continue to improve and produce medal winning players.

“In the last Games we won a gold and silver, so success in 2012 would obviously be building on that by either equalling that tally or hopefully going on and bettering it.”