Canadian BC4 Pairs Take Sixth Place at Boccia World Open in Seoul, Korea

Seoul, South Korea (July 21, 2015) – With two losses and one win on day two of the Boccia World Open in Seoul at the South Korea Olympic Handball Gymnasium, World Number One Marco Dispaltro, member of CIBC Team Next Alison Levine and Iulian Ciobanu snag sixth place in pair play.

The pair began the day with a close match against Japan. Japan led the first two ends with Canada coming back to tie the game 2-2 after the third end. Unfortunately, the comeback was no enough with the Asian country taking a 3-2 win with their last ball. Canada faced off with Thailand for their second match of the day. With Dispaltro and Levine taking control of the first three ends and Dispaltro the Ciobanu, the last, the BC4 pair took a strong 5-1 win. Against Hong Kong for their final match, Canada struggled taking a 2-4 loss.

Of the day, BC4 coach César Nicolai says, “I had the opportunity to perform quite a bit of testing while in Korea toward better understanding the Asian style of play, which is much different from American and European styles. We leave this competition not satisfied with the final results but of what we learned. We wanted a challenge, and we definitely got one. Of note as well, is that our three best performances were those against the three strongest nations present here and, of great likelihood, those that we will find at the Paralympic Games in pair play next year – China, Hong Kong, and Thailand.”

World Number One Dispaltro says, “what a great experience for our young team. This is only the first year that this pairs team has been together, since the retirement of the great aerial virtuoso, Josh Vander Vies. This new dynamic will take a few tournaments to get to where we think we can be. We basically had our first tournament together in May of this year, so I’m very confident that we will be where we need to be at the Parapans, but most importantly at the Rio 2016 games.”