Cambodia bemoans ‘high-tech Paralympics’

August 27, 2012
AFP

PHNOM PENH: It has the world’s highest percentage of amputees yet Cambodia is sending just one athlete to the Paralympics, an event critics say increasingly favours nations that can afford the latest high tech gear.

Thin Seng Hon, who was born without a fully formed right leg, will be Cambodia’s sole representative in London early next month when she competes in the 100m and 200m sprints in the below-the-knee amputee category.

Her “lucky leg”, as she calls the US$2,500 J-shaped running blade which allows her to race, helped her to three podium places at a regional athletics meet last year.

But she doubts it will keep pace with the higher-tech prosthetics of her rivals in London.

London Paralympics: where is Cambodia?

Monday 16 April 2012
Channel 4 News (UK)

With thousands of disabled athletes across Cambodia, the nation should be a powerhouse of talent for London's Paralympic Games. So why are they on the sidelines? Channel 4 News explores.

It is billed as the greatest and most prestigious chance to showcase the world's finest, most talented disabled athletes in a competition reknowned for prowess and meritocracy.

But the Paralympic Games are increasingly being seen as an event which will sideline poorer nations who have the talent, the drive and the ambition, but not the kit.

Cambodia is one such nation. With an impressive history of overcoming the dictatorial, blood-thirsty regime of Pol Pot, surviving the debris of war including landmines and gun battles, and with little in the way of wealth, the nation clearly possesses the stamina required to compete against the odds.

Cambodian runner leaves for Beijing Paralympics

2008-09-01
Xinhua

PHNOM PENH-- Kim Vanna, 40-year-old runner who lost his right leg below the knee in a landmine explosion in 1989, left Monday for Beijing on deputy of Cambodia for the Paralympic Games from September 6 to 17.

"I will compete in the 100- and 200-meter races at the game," Kim Vanna told Xinhua.

"I feel so great that I will join the Paralympic Games in Beijing because it is the first time for me to join a world class event like this," he said.

"I am a disabled person but my mind is not disabled. In the future I want to become a coach of disabled runners," Kim Vanna added.

Kim Vanna was selected by the committee on the basis of the silver medal that he had won at the ASEAN Para Games in Thailand earlier this year, said Yi Veasna, secretary general of the National Paralympic Committee of Cambodia.

"He is our national athlete selection for 2008. He has the most recent medal from the ASEAN Games," he said, adding that the government had recently awarded him US 4,000 dollars for his silver medal.

Kim Vanna has so far won 18 medals at international competitions, three golds, 10 silvers and five bronzes, and the Beijing trip will be the first Paralympics.