Competition

For Mari Holt, competing at the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games is a long-awaited dream come true. And she’s not alone—nearly 20 family members traveled from Norway to Turin to support her. Her parents, sister, uncles, aunts—everyone was there, waving custom made “Team Mari” flags and cheering her on!

A pioneering new Sports Sustainability Framework (SSF) was launched in November as a key outcome of the Erasmus+ funded Special Olympics Environmental Sustainability Impact project. 

For the first time, Special Olympics MENA hosted a regional competition dedicated to Unified Champion Schools, bringing together athletes and youth leaders from across the region to compete in unified sports.

Early November, on the island of Bonaire, a Local Organizing Committee, together with the national government of the Netherlands invested in a new, innovative, and transformative model of development through sport programming for youth with intellectual and development disabilities.

Caroline Tangitau traveled more than 11,027 miles/17,500 km from New Zealand to Germany to participate in the Special Olympics World Games Berlin 2023 in women’s powerlifting.

Dominique DeHerrera may be undersized, but her size doesn’t hold her back on the soccer pitch. Having played the sport since the age of four, the now 20-year-old DeHerrera gets to show her athletic ability and intense competitive spirit at the forward position. Her fierce and mighty style of play has created opportunities that only a select few get to experience.

The Lasalle-Windsor Stingers dugout was filled with raucous energy as the lanky Matthew Cormier made his way to the batter’s box. His teammates cheered, clapped, and stomped to encourage Cormier as he prepared for his turn at bat. Chants of "let's go Matt!" filled the air. It had the atmosphere of a tightly contested game where everything was on the line.

It was a full-circle moment for Beth Meyer. The swimmer has competed for Special Olympics Ohio since 1990 but had never participated in the USA Games, the organization’s biggest domestic competition. But 2022 happened to be her year.

90Min.com, the online football (soccer) news site, covered the women’s and men’s Division 1 final matches of the Special Olympics Unified Cup Detroit 2022.

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