Some 65 of the coun­try's top Spe­cial Olympians, as well as, of­fi­cials will leave to­day for the Spe­cial Olympics World Games in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

The ath­letes will be hop­ing to main­tain T&T's proud and suc­cess­ful his­to­ry at the Games, fol­low­ing their suc­cess in 2011 when the Games were held in Athens, Greece, and T&T won 39 medals in­clud­ing 12 gold, 16 sil­ver and 11 bronze.

Min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho vis­it­ed the swim team as they went through a fi­nal train­ing ses­sion at the Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Swim­ming Pool, yes­ter­day.

The ses­sion was led by coach­es Monique and Stephen Telfer. The en­thu­si­as­tic bunch of five boys and four girls worked on their turns and prac­tised their strokes, breath­ing pat­terns and re­lay ex­changes.

San­cho gave the team a pep talk and pre­sent­ed their ath­lete pack­ages of a tow­el, swim cap and team jack­ets.

Long­stand­ing dis­abil­i­ty swim coach Stephen Telfer was pleased at the team's prepa­ra­tion and is con­fi­dent of many medals from this new group of ath­letes who have been in train­ing for over a year.

"I am con­stant­ly amazed at the ef­fort the ath­letes give at each train­ing ses­sion. I've been coach­ing for years and my ath­letes nev­er let me down. I ex­pect we'll be re­turn­ing home with a lot of pre­cious met­al," Telfer said.

The en­tire Spe­cial Olympics con­tin­gent com­pris­es ath­letes in eight dis­ci­plines–aquat­ics, ath­let­ics, bas­ket­ball, boc­ce, eques­tri­an, foot­ball, pow­er­lift­ing and vol­ley­ball.