Canada Qualifies Four Boccia Athletes for Tokyo Paralympics
Ottawa, ON (June 4, 2020) – The BC4 Pair of Alison Levine (Montréal, QC), Iulian Ciobanu (Montréal, QC), and Marco Dispaltro (St-Jérôme, QC), and BC2 athlete Danik Allard (Bois-des-Filion, QC) have qualified for the boccia competition at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2021.
The boccia qualification process for Tokyo was not impacted by COVID-19, as the qualification period closed December 2019. The BC4 Pair secured their Tokyo qualification while capturing gold at the Povoa World Open in Portugal last October. Currently, the BC4 Pair are ranked number four in the world and, in individual play, Levine sits atop the world ranking. She is the first female to ever hold the number one position in this category in the history of the sport.
Levine looks forward to representing Canada in the individual category as well as team. It will be her second Paralympic Games: “For me there is a big difference in qualifying for Tokyo versus when I qualified for Rio. In 2016 I was still pretty new to the sport. My growth as an athlete in the last four years has been exponential.
It was announced that Allard also secured a BC2 qualification slot for the Paralympics, thanks to an impressive rookie year on the international circuit. The qualification is reserved for the highest world-ranked BC2 individual players from a country not represented in the top ten ranking in team play.
Allard was new to the National Boccia Training Squad in 2019 and at 19 years old is the youngest member of the team. He burst onto the international scene at the 2019 Montréal World Open, where he finished fourth and vaulted to a top-40 world ranking. He later claimed individual bronze at the Sao Paulo America Regional Championships – an event that featured the most heavily weighted ranking points potential, and finished the year ranked fourteenth in the world.
Allard calls the news a “dream come true.” Competing at the Paralympics has been a dream of his since discovering the sport at age 10. He sets his sights on Tokyo and “can’t wait to resume training” once the boccia National Training Centre at INS Montreal is re-opened.
Qualified athletes won’t officially be selected for the Canadian Paralympic Team until slot allocations are confirmed and announced by the Canadian Paralympic Committee before the Paralympics next year.
Read more about the International Paralympic Committee’s revised edition of qualification process for the Tokyo Paralympic Games here.
About Boccia Canada
Boccia Canada is the boccia delivery arm of the Canadian Cerebral Palsy Sports Association (CCPSA), the National Sport Organization for the Paralympic sport of boccia. Boccia Canada is focused on providing athletes and individuals of all ages and skill with the chance to play a unique Paralympic sport. CCPSA collaborates with partners to increase the participation of Canadians with cerebral palsy and related disabilities in sport and physical activity, while leading, developing and growing boccia from grassroots, to producing World and Paralympic Champions.
About boccia
Boccia is a Paralympic sport of precision and strategy similar to lawn bowling or curling, played by athletes with Cerebral Palsy, Muscular Dystrophy and related disabilities. It is one of only two Paralympic sports that do not have an Olympic counterpart. Athletes compete in one of six sport classes based on their level and type of disability: BC1, BC2, BC3, BC4, BC5, and Open. For more information on boccia, visit www.bocciacanada.ca.