Among them are Paralympic and world champions such as Irmgard Bensusan, Sebastian Dietz, Johannes Floors, Niko Kappel, Birgit Kober, Heinrich Popow, Markus Rehm, Daniel Scheil and Felix Streng as well as ten athletes from the junior team.
The youngest participants are 17 years olds Phil Grolla, Charleen Kosche and Felix Krüsemann. For other 12 athletes, Berlin will represent the international debut in a major competition. One of them is Ronny Ziesmer, who suffered a spinal cord injury while he was part of Germany gymnastics team preparing the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Now Ziesmer has set a new goal to be at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
"It wasn’t easy to make the selection. It was our ambition to compete at the home European Championships with a large but also high quality team. With 40 nominated athletes and a guide, our team is almost twice as big as at the World Championships in London last year," said NPC Germany sports director Frank-Thomas Hartleb. "We not only have numerous Paralympic and world champions with us, but also want to give the youngsters a chance to gain competitive experience on the international stage. With a view to the established forces we hope that they will strike again and build on their great successes from Rio and London."
Due to injury, however, Paralympic and European gold medallist David Behre, shot put world champion Frederike Koleiski and Léon Schäfer and Tom Sengua Malutedi, members of the 4x100m world champion relay team, will miss out.
Around 650 athletes from 40 countries are expected to compete in 191 medal events at the Berlin 2018 Europeans.
REHACARE.com; Source: International Paralympic Comittee
