ATHLETES of Jamaica’s contingent to the 14th Paralympic Games to be held in London from August 29 to September 9, are scheduled to leave the island on Thursday.

Team Jamaica will be based in Bedfordshire for the pre-Games training camp before moving to the Paralympic Village on August 22.

President of the Jamaica Paralympic Association, Christopher Samuda, will depart on August 6, while chef de mission, Suzanne Harris-Henry, and team doctor, Rory Dixon, will leave on August 20.

The team of six athletes — Tanto Campbell, Alphanso Cunningham, Sylvia Grant, Shane Hudson, Toni Greaves and Javon Campbell — will participate in track and field events and will be accompanied by coaches Neville Sinclair and Jefferson Davis, massage therapist Kerry-Lee Ricketts and sport administrator Ann Marie Smith.

The contingent is expected to return on September 12.

During the Paralympic Games, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) will broadcast an unprecedented 580 hours of live online sport from the Games via its website www.paralympic.org.

On each day of competition, the IPC website will broadcast four channels of uninterrupted live coverage with English commentary. There will be a dedicated channel for athletics, swimming and wheelchair basketball while a fourth will cover a range of sports. A fifth channel will broadcast a mixture of events with Spanish commentary.

Also of note, over 1,000 hours of sporting action from a number of venues will be made available as video on-demand during the course of the Games and both the opening and closing ceremonies will be shown live. Two daily five-minute news bulletins will also be produced in English and Spanish.