Fitzpatrick out to bring the thunder Down Under

Kimberley’s own Ricardo Fitzpatrick is among the 169 athletes selected to represent South Africa at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games that will take place in Australia from April 4-15.

An excited Fitzpatrick yesterday confirmed that he was among 17 paralympic athletes selected to represent team SA, where he is also the only paralympic powerlifter, in addition to being the only athlete from the Northern Cape.

Fitzpatrick’s name was among the total of 169 athletes announced by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) at Olympic House in Johannesburg earlier this week.

This will be the second time that Fitzpatrick makes his way Down Under to compete, and he attributes his call-up to TeamSA to his solid ranking within the Commonwealth where he is ranked seventh in the 88kg weight category.

Fitzpatrick’s last visit to Melbourne was back in 2006. He says he was still new in the game then and went only as far placing 14th in his division. He hopes to do much better this time around as the Commonwealth Games uses a dual-ranking system in which he is placed much higher.

TeamSA athletes will do battle across 16 codes competing in athletics, badminton, lawn bowls, boxing, cycling (mountain bike, road and track), gymnastics, hockey, netball, rugby sevens, shooting, table tennis, triathlon, weightlifting and wrestling.

The men’s sevens rugby team will only be announced at the end of the month.

Other team sports will see women’s rugby sevens, men’s and women’s hockey and the women’s netballers in action, while there are also team disciplines in track cycling and triathlon.

Fitzpatrick said the current Commonwealth Games are a springboard to qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, so the results he will get in Australia will go towards his overall world ranking.