Brunei will be among the 16 countries making its debut at the Paralympics this year welcome news for the Sultanate on the competition's 100-day countdown yesterday.

The Press Association reported that Brunei will be among the 165 countries in action during the Aug 29-Sept 9 event in London, with the addition of the 16 countries set to see a rise in the number of competitors from 3,951 during the last edition in Beijing in 2008 to around 4,200.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) believes this year's Paralympics is shaping up to be bigger and better than four years ago.

"With 4,200 athletes from 165 countries set to compete in the British capital in 100 days time, the London Paralympic Games will officially be the biggest ever," IPC president Sir Philip Craven was quoted as saying on IPC's website yesterday.

"I'm also becoming increasingly confident that they may also be the best ever, even surpassing Beijing which I didn't think was possible four years ago.

"Athletes are delivering record breaking performances on an astoundingly frequent basis, ticket sales are the best yet so far out from a Games and a record number of TV viewers are set to watch the Paralympics around the world," he added.

It will take some doing to beat the numbers set in the Chinese capital, where an amazing 279 world records were broken.

The 2008 event also drew a cumulative global television audience of 3.8 billion and a further 3.44 million at the venues.

Since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the Paralympics have taken place in the same city and venues as the Olympics.

Brunei will be joined by Antigua & Barbuda, Cameroon, Comoros, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, North Korea, San Marino, Solomon Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the US Virgin Islands as the 16 new teams this year.

All countries have been allocated slots either through minimum qualifying standards, bipartite agreements or via wild cards.

Courtesy from Brunei Times