Young County Derry swimmer does Ireland proud at World Deaf Youth Games
A County Derry girl represented Ireland and the first ever World Deaf Youth Games in Brazil.
The competition took place in Sao Paulo between 15 and 22 January.
Abbi Craig (16) from Dungiven was the youngest member of Team Ireland and did her country proud as she qualified for the final in the 50m backstroke and placed seventh.
Unfortunately Abbi suffered a knee injury in the 100m front crawl and wasn’t able to compete in the other events, including her specialty, the 100m backstroke.
Abbi was ‘fiercely disappointed’ after her injury according to her mum Colette but the event was a great experience nonetheless.
“She enjoyed the craic and meeting so many other deaf swimmers from all over the world. There were teams from Italy, Japan, China - it was just amazing. Ours was one of the smallest teams,” Colette said.
It was the first ever instalment of the World Deaf Youth Games and the first competition to give young deaf swimmers the opportunity to compete for Ireland at that level.
Abbi is an extremely talented swimmer. At just 16 she already has 16 titles to her name, despite the injury meaning she couldn’t compete to the extent she was hoping for in Brazil she has aspirations to push on and continue competing at a high level.
“I think she would like to go to the Deaf Olympics next year in Tokyo. Obviously we'll have to look into that and see how that gets funded,” Colette said.
Abbi is currently in Lower 6th and studying for 4 A levels at Limavady Grammar School. She is a member of the Limavady Amateur Swimming Club and competed in the Irish Nationals last year.
She was the only representative from the six counties at the World Deaf Youth Games. She was joined by Jessica Cunningham from Mullingar and Gemma Whelan from Cork.
Colette said Deaf Sports Ireland were fantastic in helping them with funding for the World Deaf Youth Games, however, funding can be very hard to come by for a young deaf Irish swimmer.
Neither Swim Ireland or Swim Ulster have a programme or policy to help young deaf people get started in swimming.
In the absence of specialised coaching for deaf swimmers Colette helped coach Abbi herself.
“She has been swimming since she was eight. She enjoyed it. She struggled to learn the basics because there’s nobody who signs and when you’re in the pool you can’t use hearing aids so she relies on lip reading and sign [language].
“If she was too deep or too shallow or she needed to catch the water - that's all done verbally. So she needed some sort of help, another coach actually talked me into it so that’s how I ended up helping out.”