Girl students participate in the Special Olympics at Utkal University in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 19: Children afflicted with various disabilities took everyone by surprise at a two-day sports event, organised by Special Olympics Bharat-Orissa at the Utkal University sports ground.

This special event, which started today for the Khurda district, brought together more than 250 children above the age of eight years from several institutes on a common platform to showcase their talents. The children from Open Learning Systems, Chetana Institute for the Mentally Handicapped, Sriharsha Mishra School for the Deaf, Orissa Association for the Blind, Autism Therapy Centre, BBC School for the Deaf and Shanti Sishu Mandir took part in various events ranging from football, badminton, bocce and athletics. Many others, who are not part of any institute, but are registered as athletes, are also participating in the event.

“I wheeled ahead of everyone and won the 50 metres wheelchair race,” said 12-year-old Adyasha Mohanty.

The ministry of youth affairs and sports had assigned Special Olympics Bharat as the nodal agency for conducting and supervising such events for athletes with various disabilities. “This organisation has been conducting such events annually in the state for the last 20 years,” area director of the Orissa chapter, Prakash Rath, said.

“It started as an international movement. Today, it is being conducted in 192 countries,” said Rath.

For this event, special educators had filtered athletes from rural areas to participate at the district level.

“Five more districts — Sundergarh, Bhadrak, Kandhamal, Puri and Dhenkanal — will be covered by the end of this month. The winners of each district would face each other at the state level. Many of our athletes even qualify for the national level,” said Rath.

The Special Olympics, which concludes tomorrow, was inaugurated today by the state commissioner for persons with disabilities, Kasturi Mahapatra.