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Alan Auil, Chairman - Special Olympics Belize
"It's very difficult. We do this once a every year, we have this national games. A part from this event we do have smaller events in the districts and in the north and the south region and in the Belize District area. For once a year we host national games where we bring everybody in. It's not only difficult to plan but it's also quite expensive and so we do rely on contributions from the private and the public sector. The office of the Prime Minister was kind enough to grant us $12,000, but we got other sponsorship as well. We had people leaving PG this morning as early as 4am to make it here today and from Corozal at 5am."

"At the end of the games they have to get in the bus and head back home, so you can imagine what a difficult day it is for them. We've done a lot of planning but for the athletes, they are really dedicated to this and they have put in a lot of hard work and will endure a very hard day when it's done."

"Throughout the world law enforcement partnered with Special Olympics to help raise funds and to raise awareness of the athletes that we work for. We have been blessed to get a good group of officers to do this committee here in Belize. Its headed by Louise Willis and they basically not only carried the torch and bring it to the games, but really throughout the year they help to raise funds."

"It is again another part of integrating the other parts of society with inclusion for children and for all people really with intellectual and other disabilities."

The national games is a regional competition, north, south and Central. The participants of today's event were selected from the regional games held in the different regions last month. As you can rightfully see the winning region is the Central region with 15 gold medals, closely followed by South with 14 gold medals and then north with 6.

We'll take a closer look at the winners on Monday's newscast.