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Lübeck swimmer ready for European para youth games
Luebeck. Pajulahti, Finland, a good 120 kilometers from Helsinki, is something of an athlete’s dream. Idyllically situated on Lake Kukkanen, it offers running tracks, an indoor swimming pool, soccer fields, gyms and a good dozen indoor arenas, even for soccer players and track and field athletes. The sixth European Paralympic Youth Games (EPYG) will open today in the Olympic training center in Finland. 600 young athletes compete in eight sports (track and field, swimming, goalball, wheelchair basketball, table tennis, boccia, judo, tableball). The German team has 31 active members, including swimmer Bálint Köszegváry (13) from SC Delphin Lübeck. The crooked knife table tennis talent Mio Wagner (15) is not there. The national coach decided at short notice not to start the team.
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Köszegváry’s most important competition
In Helsinki, the para swimmers choose their best. It is Köszegváry’s most important competition since he first jumped into warm water at the age of five. “It’s all very exciting and exciting, I’m really happy,” reports the multiple German champion, who has been in the Finnish capital with his trainer Eugen Steffen since Monday. “The conditions are ideal: the hotel is great, the Olympic Hall is only a 15-minute walk away,” says Steffen. “And Bálint is fit, that looked very good in training.” The last test competition in Neumünster also went very well with best times. The man from Neustadt, who has been missing all long fingers on his right hand except for his thumb since birth and whose left foot is also smaller, has a mammoth two-day program ahead of him from Friday. He is registered for five distances and for the relay. The downside: Köszegváry will follow the opening ceremony in the hotel. “It wouldn’t have worked, so we’re going to be at the closing ceremony on Sunday,” says Steffen. Bálint is highly motivated: “I’m ready.”
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Table tennis team does not compete
For Mio Wagner, on the other hand, it is now on summer vacation. The German youth champion in WK10 would have liked to play in Helsinki after reaching the quarter-finals in Ostrava, Czech Republic. The 15-year-old will start at the table tennis boarding school in Düsseldorf on August 1st and is aiming for the Para World Championships in November.
By Jens pumpkin and Christoph Staffen