Dispaltro snags fourth place at Boccia World Open in Seoul, Korea

Seoul, South Korea (July 23, 2015) – On the final day of competition at the 2015 Boccia World Open, World Number One Marco Dispaltro (St. Jérôme, QC) takes fourth place while member of CIBC Team Next Alison Levine (Montréal, QC) steals fifth and Iulian Ciobanu (Chisinau, Moldova) grabs eighth place at his first international competition.

Dispaltro and Ciobanu crossed paths in their first match, with the World Number One beating the newcomer with a score of 7-2. Dispaltro later fell to Yuanseng Zheng of China in the semi-finals with a score of 1-6 and Hyeonseok Seo of host country Korea with a score of 0-7 in the bronze medal match. Of the competition, Dispaltro says, “this competition was as tough as we anticipated, we played well, but we’ll need to step it up to get to the podium in 2016. We have a young dedicated BC4 team and we’ll make the necessary adjustments to get to the podium in Rio. For Parapans, we’ll be a force to reckon with, because of the lessons we learned here and our hunger to perform on our home soil.”

In a tense match, Levine faltered to Hyeonseok Seo with a score of 2-4. Reflecting on the day, she states, “Well, I finished in 5th place. Considering how strong the Asian teams are and our limited opportunities to counter them, I’m happy. This is only my second international season and I have already earned a silver medal and now a top quarter finish in Asia. Our goal coming here was to gain experience playing these teams and that mission is definitely achieved. We can go home now knowing what we need to work on for the next time we play them.”