Supporting Champions!

The weeks following the Global Games provide Virtus with a chance for reflection and planning as we launch into the next 4-year cycle to 2027. The past few years have seen some incredible successes with new events, new nations joining the Virtus family and new partnerships in sport, but we also saw some very difficult moments, most obviously the impact of the global pandemic and the cancellation of our planned programme in 2020 and 2021.

Virtus is a global organisation with limited resources yet we continue to punch above our weight delivering projects, new sports and forging new pathways for athletes with an intellectual impairment across the world. Our membership now stands at more than 90 nations – more than at any time in our past – and the rate of growth in the number of athletes increases each year.

We have recently delivered new multi-sport events including Regional Games in Asia/Oceania (2022) whilst the Americas Region who will host their first Games in 2026. We have grown the eligibility categories or ‘classifications’ in Virtus championships to create fairer competition for athletes with more profound or multiple impairments and launched a new classification group for athletes with autism – the first of its kind in the world. In doing so we have made elite sport more accessible to many millions more talented athletes around the world who would otherwise have missed out and never fulfilled their potential.

Virtus also now delivers across the largest number of sports in our history, with newer sports like karate, taekwondo, hockey, judo and sailing being added to some of the longer standing sports like athletics, tennis, swimming and skiing. We have been able to do this by forging successful partnerships with a number of the International Sports Federations, most recently World Karate.

But we could not do any of this without your help and we are immensely grateful for the support you give to Virtus. Over the coming year, Virtus will begin the process of reviewing its strategic plan and setting the goals for the period to 2028. This guides our work and ensures we are achieving the best possible impact and outcomes with the limited resources and finances we have available.

I very much hope that you will continue to follow and support us as we continue our journey and look forward to reporting on our further achievements soon.