Word: cambodia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Planned by World Organization Volleyball for Disabled (WOVD), the event runs from Nov. 24 to Dec. 2, and is open to disabled athletes capable of standing, with or without a prosthesis (the WOVD also holds "sitting" volleyball tournaments for wheelchair-bound players). Ranked top in Asia, Cambodia is one of eight national teams competing for a trophy that local artists have fittingly sculpted from melted-down AK-47 assault rifles. Canada, the reigning champion, is the team to beat. The German squad is also highly rated. Out of the running are Afghanistan and Rwanda, who pulled their teams...
...Like those troubled nations, Cambodia has been ravaged by civil strife. The poisonous aftermath still lingers in mine-strewn soil, where the nation's farmers scrape a living. One of the consequences is that there's no lack of amputees keen to strap on an artificial limb and hit a ball over a net. Since 2002, a wet-season disabled volleyball league has nurtured a squad of high-flying semipro athletes who came fourth at the 2005 World Cup in Canada and are gunning for gold on home soil. Christian Zepp, 26, the team's German coach who arrived...
...Cambodia's volleyball players lost limbs to land mines. Some suffered polio or other childhood diseases, or were maimed by motorbike wipeouts on dangerous roads. Others are ex-combatants with nowhere to go: the Hawks, in the notorious Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin, field a mixed team of cashiered former rebels and government soldiers. From eight teams in 2002, the local league has grown to 16 sponsored squads in two divisions who compete for an annual $3,000 prize - a sum that goes a long way in rural Cambodia...
...National Sports Complex, completed in 1964, is the venue for the WOVD tournament. Designed by the nation's architectural doyen, Vann Molyvann, the Modernist facility was one of the high-tide marks of Cambodia's post-independence achievements, but the nation slid into civil war before it could be properly put to use. Today, the complex is hidden from view by a garish Chinese shophouses that obscure its perimeter walls, but the facilities have been restored. All the matches in the WOVD competition will be played in an indoor stadium and are free to the public. Cambodian Prime Minister...
...Staging a successful World Cup is symbolic of Cambodia's sporting rebirth, says Chris Minko, 51, the league's full-time secretary general. Back in the 1960s, then Premier Norodom Sihanouk promoted Phnom Penh as the sporting hub of Southeast Asia, until Indonesia stole his thunder by staging a nonaligned version of the Olympics. Secret U.S. bombings and the Khmer Rouge did the rest. But Minko, a combative, shaven-headed Australian, wants to see Phnom Penh back on top. The first step is victory on Dec. 2, which Minko hopes will help reclaim Cambodia's stature as a sports power...