Para swimmer Nikita Howarth gets involved at Junior Disability Games

Para swimmer Nikita Howarth joined 31 young swimmers as they took to the pool at the Junior Disability Games held in Cambridge last week.

Howarth, who was selected for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games team in April, was the guest speaker on the opening night of the Games and then participated in some of the 23 swimming events, racing alongside the swimmers aged from 8 to 17 years.

Swimming New Zealand Swim Safe Advisor, Alannah Jury, was at the Games to help to run the swimming events.

“Some swimmers were very nervous to be racing against Nikita,” Jury noted.

“Whereas some of the younger, louder swimmers were excited and kept egging Nikita on to enter more races as they really wanted to race her.”

The morning of swimming concluded with relay races where five teams made up of swimmers from different age groups and regions competed against each other to win the relay team title.

“It was great to see everyone working together,” Jury said.

Swimming was the last event of the Games, which ran from Friday 25 April to Sunday 27 April, with some of the swimming competitors also taking part in other sports codes in the previous two days.

Categories for the swimming events were

Under 12: Wheelchair users, neurological impairment, loss of limb or limb deficiency, visual impairment and intellectual impairment.

13 and over: Wheelchair users, neurological impairment, loss of limb or limb deficiency, visual impairment and intellectual impairment.

Each swimmer that participated is sent a certificate with the events they competed in, their times for those events and their placing.

The annual Junior Disability Games is an Olympic-style sports festival that provides an entry level opportunity for young athletes to participate in para-sport and for some acts as a stepping stone toward the Paralympic Games.