The Federación Española de Deportes de Personas con Discapacidad Física (FEDDF – Spanish Federation of Sports for People with Physical Disabilities) has released the list of the 12 players who will make up the Spanish men’s team at the Wheelchair Basketball World Championships, which will take place in Hamburg (Germany) from the 16th to the 26th August.
The technical staff, directed by Óscar Trigo, has drawn up the final squad after four preparatory meetings for the World Cup, held in San Andrés del Rabanedo and León last Christmas, in Barajas (Madrid) and Blankenberge (Belgium) at Easter, in Lignano-Sabbiadoro and Trieste (Italy) in mid-June and in Sheffield (Great Britain) at the beginning of July.
The list of players is formed by Fran Lara and Pablo Lavandeira (class 1.0); Dani Stix (1.5); David Mouriz and Jordi Ruiz (2.5); Amadou Diallo, Jesús Romero, Alejandro Zarzuela and Pablo Zarzuela (3.0); Asier García and Ignacio ‘Pincho’ Ortega (4.0), and Agustín Alejos(4.5).
The average age of the national team is 27.83 years the lowest it has been over the last four years, it was 31.42 years at the 2014 World Championship in Incheon, South Korea where they finished fourth and 30.42 years at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games where they claimed silver.
Most of the players (seven) selected played for Spanish club side ILUNION last season, whilst two played for Bidaideak Bilbao BSR and two from Amfiv, then one each from Rincón Fertilidad Amivel and the Fundación Grupo Norte.
There are two new additions to the national team that competed at the European Championships 2017 in Adeje, they are Lavandeira and Ortega, two of the most promising players in Spanish wheelchair basketball, at 18 and 17 years old, respectively.
Six athletes remain from the team that played in 2014 World Championships in Incheon, they are Lara, Mouriz, Ruiz, the Zarzuela brothers and García.
The Spanish men’s team has played in four of the last 12 World Championships with the following results: seventh in Tampa, USA 1979, seventh in Edmonton, Canada 1994, sixth in Sydney, Australia 1998 and fourth in Incheon, South Korea 2014.
Dani Stix (1.5)
Pablo Zarzuela (3.0)
Fran Lara (1.0)
Alejandro Zarzuela (3.0)
Amadou Diallo (3.0)
Jordi Ruiz (2.5)
Asier García (4.0)
David Mouriz (2.5)
Jesús Romero (3.0)
Pablo Lavandeira (1.0)
Pincho Ortega (4.0)
Agustín Alejos (4.5)
Wording courtesy of Federación Española de Deportes de Personas con Discapacidad Física (FEDDF – Spanish Federation of Sports for People with Physical Disabilities)
