Special Olympics Jamaica has joined forces with its Caribbean counterparts to improve the game of floor hockey, in preparation for next year's World Winter Games in Boise, Idaho.

Coaches from Belize, Cayman Island, Barbados, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and host Jamaica will undergo training in the rules, regulations, skills and strategies of floor hockey during a two-day clinic at GC Foster College which ends this evening.

Main presenter at the clinic, Neal Johnson, referee and chief of Special Olympics International, said at a press briefing at Alhambra Inn Thursday evening that floor hockey was one of the original sports at the inaugural Games in 1968.

Johnson, who is also president of Special Olympics New York, said coaches would be taken through "different aspects of the entire spectrum of floor hockey".

Johnson hailed Jamaicans intellectually challenged Special Olympians for their "athleticism", describing them as "well-coached and well-trained".

Executive director of Special Olympics Jamaica, Lorna Bell, said Jamaica would be sending its own team to the 2009 World Winter Games in Boise, Idaho.

"For the first time Jamaica will be sending a full 16-member hockey team. We are not going as a Caribbean team, but as Special Olympics Jamaica," she noted.

According to Bell, Jamaica would send a 22-member team to the Winter Games, including two speed skaters and four coaches, that would cost of $3.5 million.

She noted that Tamara Mitchell captured three gold at the 2005 Winter Games in Japan.

Some 3,000 athletes from 85 countries are expected to compete in seven Olympic-type sports, such as cross-country skiing, figure skating, snowboarding, snowshoeing, along with the speed skating and floor hockey.

Next year's Feb 6 - 13 Games will likely be the largest World Winter Games in the history of Special Olympics.

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