The Paralympic Top Team was founded by the German National Paralympic Committee (DBS) in 2006 based on the financial support of Allianz SE and Deutsche Telekom AG.
Top Team athletes Kirsten Bruhn and Holger Nikelis together with IPC’s president Sir Philip Craven welcome Allianz’ support for the Top Team.
The overall objective of this program is to enable Paralympic athletes to successfully prepare for the Paralympic Games in Beijing 2008. Since professional training is highly time-consuming, there are athletes who have difficulties in managing the highly demanding triangle of work, life and training without cutting back on income and consequently on their standard of living. For those athletes the financial support of this program is the key to success in Beijing and also for managing the demands that sport, job and family bring with them.
Naturally there a certain requirements which athletes need to fulfill in order to qualify for this program. These requirements are:
- Classifiable
- Being a candidate for a Paralympic medal for a at least one Paralympic discipline
- Membership of the German Paralympic Team
- An individual training schedule
- Approval from the chief coach
- Individual athletes have priority over team athletes
Currently the German Top Team consists of 40 athletes:
- 17 women / 23 men
- 20 amputee athletes
- 8 visually impaired athletes
- 4 athletes with cerebral palsy
- 8 athletes with spinal cord injuries