THE FIRST World Bowls Championships to be held in Cyprus will take place in Paphos next week, despite the lack of support from the Cyprus Tourism Organisation and the Cyprus Sports Authority.

The prestigious event, which will be hosted at the Athena Beach and Athena Royal beach Hotels Bowls Greens – will see 13 countries compete in Fours, Singles, Triples and Pairs events.

Loukas Paraskevas, President of Bowls Cyprus said, “We are somewhat disappointed that KOA and CTO are not more forthcoming with support in an active way…because the potential is immense here. The island will benefit from tourism as would the hotels. We really need them to get on board…”

Aristos Diomedous , General Manager of the Costantinou Bros Hotels- the main sponsors of the event – agreed.

“This is an International event without any involvement of KOA, which is very strange. Yet they support so many sports which don’t bring tourism to Cyprus.”

He added: “I think they don’t have an excuse not to support an event like this. It happens for two weeks this year and next year – also for two weeks- we have the Champion of Champions event.”

Diomedous highlighted the fact that bowls brings an increasing number of winter business to Cyprus.

“The backing of KOA is essential. The sports council in Cyprus in needs to get involved in all sorts of sport which is taking place on the island and they should do this actively,” he said.

The Bowls Cyprus president said obviously the sport had no roots in Cypriot life. “It’s not something we grew up with for generations, it is difficult to get people on board, but through the many events we successfully take part in, we are actually promoting the island all over the world.”

Paraskevas underlined the urgent need for ‘new blood’ to enter the sport, describing players as ‘an ageing generation.’ 

“We need to have more input from the authorities to encourage Cypriots to play and move the sport forward.”

Barrie Davies, the Chairman of Bowls Cyprus said, “Recently the number of players has been depleting. This is because most of the people involved are British ex pats, many of whom are going back to the UK. This is down to economic reasons and the fact that with ageing comes failing health.”

Paraskevas said that a possible solution would be to introduce a programme to encourage younger Cypriot players to take up the game. 

The World Bowls Atlantic Championships will take place between October 17-30, and players from 13 countries including Canada, England, Ireland, Israel, the United States and South Africa will take part.

Competitors will make use of the world-class bowls facilities of both the Athena Beach and Athena Royal hotels.

The Bowls Cyprus International squad- currently being led by Roger Shire – has gained a strong reputation and players will also take part in the European Championships in Portugal in November.

Cyprus has already been represented in competitions as far afield as China, Hong Kong, Australia and Africa with encouraging results.

Davies said: “This is in spite of the fact that we play on artificial surfaces rather than grass, as in most other countries, and also the fact that we only have 350 members as opposed to more than 30,000 in the UK.”

He said even though Bowls Cyprus was only five years old it had a number of touring teams who want to play here regularly.

“We hope our team competing

Cyprus Mail