On Monday 29th January 2018, the pools draw for the preliminary round of the Wheelchair Basketball World Championships will take place at the St. Pauli Museum in the host city of Hamburg, Germany.
The world’s wheelchair basketball elite will meet from the 16th August to 26th August 2018 at the edel-optics.de Arena in Hamburg. This will be the first time that Germany has ever hosted a World Championships and it will also be the biggest ever, with 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams competing for the title of World Champions.
The draw is seeded to ensure a fair distribution of teams from the same zones.
In the women’s competition, the teams have been paired (pairings below), with the first country drawn from each pairing going into Pool A, whilst the second will then automatically go into Pool B. As hosts, Germany, who are paired with European Champions The Netherlands, will get the choice of which pool they would like to compete in.
Pairing One: USA, Canada
Pairing Two: Brazil, Argentina
Pairing Three: Australia, China
Pairing Four: Great Britain, France
Pairing Five: Algeria, Spain
Pairing Six: Germany, The Netherlands
In the men’s competition, we will see four pools of four teams being drawn. The sixteen teams in the Championships consist of four teams from the Americas, four teams from Asia-Oceania, one team from Africa and seven teams from Europe.
The order for the draw of the men’s competition is different due to it being a sixteen-team competition. The zonal champions USA, Morocco, Australia and Turkey are all seeded and cannot be drawn in the same pool. As such, the first draw will determine which seeded team is in Pool A, Pool B, Pool C and Pool D.
Following this, all teams from group one will then be drawn, followed by group two, then group three, and finally group four (see below for groups). As they are drawn, teams will be placed into the first available spot in a pool as long as it does not include the seeded team from their group.
As with the women’s competition, hosts Germany will be given the chance to choose which pool they would like to compete in, but they are not allowed to select the pool which has already been allocated to the seeded team in their group, Turkey. Once chosen, the other two teams in their group will be placed into the two remaining pool spots.
Group One: USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil
Group Two: Morocco, Spain, Poland, Italy
Group Three: Australia, Iran, Japan, South Korea
Group Four: Turkey, Great Britain, Germany, The Netherlands
The draw will be available to follow online via www.2018wbwc.de
