On November 17, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. An international women's goalball tournament will be held today in Vitebsk, Oleg Kirillov, a member of the executive committee of the Paralympic Committee of Belarus, informed a BELTA correspondent. Goalball is a sport for visually impaired people, included in the programme of the Paralympic Games. Five teams are participating in the tournament in Vitebsk – two from Belarus and Russia each, and one from Ukraine. These are the strongest teams in their countries, whose players are part of the national teams. In Belarus, goalball is getting a second wind, and the Vitebsk tournament will help its revival. However, the main goal of the competition is to attract people with disabilities to active sports, to involve them in society. Goalball is played by two teams of three players each. Each team can have a maximum of three substitute players. The match takes place in a sports hall, the floor of which is marked with a rectangular court divided into two halves by a centre line. There are goals at both ends of the court. The game is played with a so-called audible ball – it has a bell inside. The objective of the game is to roll the ball across the goal line of the defending team, while they try to prevent it. Complete silence must be observed in the hall during the game. All athletes wear special glasses that provide complete light blocking, allowing players with different residual vision to compete together. The game lasts 20 minutes – two halves of 10 minutes each. The history of goalball began in 1946 as a rehabilitation method for visually impaired veterans of World War II. The first world tournament took place in 1976 in Toronto, the first World Championship in goalball was held in Austria in 1978, and in 1980 the game was included in the official programme of the Paralympic Games. -0-

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