It was a historic day for women’s wheelchair basketball in the Africa continent as Algeria women became the first ever women’s team to represent their zone at a Paralympics Games.
It was a tough start to the tournament for the newcomers as they faced a strong Chinese side and it proved to be much of a one sided affair for most of the game as the experience Chinese team proved too much for the African team.
However, buoyed on by the crowd who really got behind the underdogs, the Algerian women doubled their score in the final quarter to finish the match, 16 – 83.
Algerian Head Coach, Djawed Zigh, said, “It is a great responsibility for his team’s side and it’s our first time to participate in a Paralympics and to compete in this sort of competition at such a high performance level. So it was not an easy match to conduct and was very difficult.
“However it provides great happiness for us to here and representing a great continent such as Africa and also lots of women with many different disabilities.”
China Women’s Head Coach, Yuansheng Xu, said “It was a great practice for our athletes as it is the first game of the Paralympic Games for us, so it is very important and great to play this game.
“We hope the team will play better and better as we go through the tournament because the opposition will just get stronger and stronger.“
Full match statistics can be found here https://www.rio2016.com/en/paralympics/wheelchair-basketball-womens-group-b-preliminary-wb-3
