South Sudan Wheelchair Basketball Team Hopes for Paralympics Berth

July 25, 2012

At a basketball court in South Sudan’s capital Juba, the national wheelchair team is still practicing hard - despite only a glimmer of hope that a select few will get a last-minute chance to compete in London's upcoming Paralympic Games.

Wheelchair-bound basketball players race around a court in the sweltering evening heat. The players bear the scars of the ravages of war and poverty: limbs lost to land mines and bomb shrapnel, or twisted by polio.

The decades-long civil war from which the new nation of South Sudan emerged in July 2011 left a legacy of some 50,000 disabled people. It is why representation of the wheelchair basketball team in this year's Paralympic Games is so important.

Gatluak Kual Luak, president of the Wheelchair Basketball Association, said the dream of competing in London has kept the team together.

“If South Sudan wheelchair basketball appears or is seen in the Olympics, it will mean [a lot] not only to me, but it will mean [a lot] to the whole of the nation,” said Luak.

But the nation's Olympic dream is fading fast.

South Sudan fell short of forming the minimum five sports federations in time to become a full member of the International Olympic Committee.

South Sudan Minister of Sports Cirino Hiteng Ofuho said that despite a letter from President Salva Kiir to the IOC, hopes of raising South Sudan’s flag have disappeared.