Transcript
PAUL BIRD: We were extremely happy with the fact that we had a table tennis player represent Fiji. That's the first that's happened in our Oceania group to get someone outside of athletics and power-lifting through so that has been an outstanding effort from Fiji to a fledgling program, that we've only just started over the last 18 months to two years and so that bodes well for our future and we're trying to develop table tennis as well as badminton in our smaller developing countries because badminton is a new sport for (the 2020 Paralympics in) Tokyo and we are trying to look at sports that take little equipment, little infrastructure but maximise opportunities so very pleased with that.
We had two young athletes come through in Samoa. Young Sio Laki, he qualified in his own right as a thrower and we had Maggie Aiono - she really is someone to look to the future. If we can keep them both into training they showed tremendous potential. I think (they) probably would have gone home maybe disappointed with their performance but first time on a big stage and they showed great potential and have got the opportunity, if they're looked after and if we can maintain their interest and particularly their training and opportunity over the next four years, they really should go well.
VINNIE WYLIE: How challenging or how easy perhaps is it for these athletes to repeat to commit to another four years to Tokyo?
PB: What we are trying to do is try to bring them closer - their Paralympic Committee - to try to align and link it to their Olympic Committee. In most of these NPC they tend to sit out to the side of the sports programme within their countries and therefore they get the crumbs of the funding, the crumbs of the opportunities and...this Games I'm aware that in Tonga, Fiji and Samoa they actually showed the opening and closing live and they've shown a range of sports. That goes a long way in raising the profile, particularly of parasport athletes, because they haven't had that opportunity over the years.
Second thing is most of them come here, they might have been given a wildcard but in most cases...it's a pretty big ask for them to come to a stage like this and perform so we are trying to change that by running talent ID programs now, we're trying to target athletes, get them into a local programme, provide opportunities for qualification and then try to continue them on and it's a challenge because in a lot of cases the funding isn't there and where we can we're trying to put them into mainstream programmes in those countries - we do that well in Australia and New Zealand but it is a struggle in other Oceania countries and that's our challenge.