AS the first team of the 12-man Jamaican delegation gets ready to leave for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, today, Chef de Mission Richard Shaw is confident that the Jamaican Para athletes will do very well.

The Para athletes, coaches, massage therapist and team doctor leave between August 20 and August 26 and will be led at the Games by president of the Jamaica Paralympic Association, Christopher Samuda.

The Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, will run from August 24 to September 5, 2021.

“The Games will be challenging but we can achieve some amazing results as long as our athletes and administrators remain focused and work hard on behalf of Jamaica,” he said.

“The team has been training well and we have a mixture of youth and experience. In fact, we have two new promising Para athletes who will compete in taekwondo and judo, which we are confident will increase our chances of medalling,” Shaw continued.

The Jamaican Para athletes will include Alberto Campbell in the T20 class contesting the 400m race; veteran Paralympian Sylvia Grant in the T57 class discus and Theodore Subba, 100kg judo. Also, for the first time in the history of the Paralympic Games, taekwondo has been added to the list of competitions and Shauna-Kay Hines will be the Jamaican competing.

Shaw is a past senior international field hockey player for Jamaica who represented Raiders United in the local Field Hockey National League. He served as director of the Jamaica Hockey Federation for five years and managed the Senior Field Hockey Men’s team to the Dominican Republic Games in 2006 in a five-test series which Jamaica won 4-1. He also represented Jamaica at the ALBA games in Venezuela the following year.

Shaw was selected as assistant manager for the Jamaica Junior Field Hockey team to Cuba in 2005 and the Para Grand Prix in Brazil, 2017. As an internationally qualified technical official he has served in that capacity at five international field hockey competitions in the Americas, organised by the Pan American Hockey Federation.