Five Canadian Boccia Athletes Head to Sao Paulo World Boccia Cup

By Boccia Canada 
Image credit: Patrick Beauchemin | Défi sportif AlterGo

The Sao Paulo World Boccia Cup, beginning this Saturday in Brazil, will see five athletes from Canada competing internationally. It is the second to last competition for the Canadian team, before the Paralympic Games begin at the end of August.
 
Danik Allard (Bois-des-Filion, QC), Kristyn Collins (St. John’s, NL), and Lance Cryderman (Sudbury, ON) will compete in both the Individual and Team events. Collins (BC2 female), Cryderman (BC1 male) and Allard (BC2 male) are awaiting word if they will receive a bipartite slot for the Games in Paris. They are 12^th, 10^th and 12^th respectively in individual world ranks while 10^th in Team. Both Cryderman and Allard are also former Paralympians.
 
It could be Collins’ first Paralympic experience if she were to take a bipartite slot. The slots are allocated based on a multitude of factors decided by World Boccia and the International Paralympic Committee.
 
BC3 athlete Joëlle Guérette (Montréal, QC) and BC4 athlete Marco Dispaltro (Montréal, QC) will be competing in the individual event in separate male and female divisions. Guérette sits in 19^th in the world in BC3 female, while Dispaltro is 17^th in BC4 male. They will not take part in the Pairs portion of the event.

“The BC1 and BC2 Team are just coming off the World Cup in Montréal, which ended in them reaching the semifinals at a world event – a first for a Canadian Team in the last decade. We should be going into the Sao Paulo World Cup with more confidence which will hopefully show in our results,” mentioned Ed Richardson, their coach, Boccia Canada. 
 
Follow all the Boccia Canada action on the Facebook Page here, Twitter page here, and Instagram page here. 
 
Find out more about the rules of boccia and the Paris qualification factors here.