Commonwealth Games gold medalist Benjamin Treffers of Australia is targeting adding more medals to his growing collection when he competes at next month’s Summer Universiade in Taipei.
Treffers will aim to defend the 50 meter backstroke title he claimed at the 2013 Universiade in Kazan.
The 25-year-old, who sealed the gold medal in the 50m backstroke at Glasgow 2014, is part of what will be the biggest team Australia has sent to a Universiade.
Treffers is hoping to use the event in Taipei, which runs from August 19 to 30, as a stepping stone for Gold Coast 2018.
He competed in Kazan after narrowly missing out on selection for the 2012 Olympics and the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona.
“It really helped me to start enjoying my racing again and competing at that top level propelled me onto a great year following,” Treffers said.
Australia have announced the teams in 14 of the sports they are due to take part in at the 2017 Universiade, including swimming, athletics and weightlifting.
Their squads in artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, badminton, basketball, fencing, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, volleyball and wushu have also been revealed.
Two final team announcements are planned in the coming weeks.
Rhythmic gymnast Enid Sung, whose career has been littered with serious injury problems, is set to make her second Universiade appearance.
The 22-year-old was due to represent Australia at the 2015 event in Gwangju but tore her hamstring the day before she was due to fly out to the South Korean city.
“I’m really excited, I mean this time last year I was doing a Euro trip with my best friend and eating ice-cream three meals a day,” she said.
“So I kind of came back to the sport seven months ago.”
Events are scheduled to held in venues in Taipei, Keelung, New Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu.
Around 10,000 athletes from 150 countries are expected to take part at the multi-sport university competition.
Australia have participated at every Summer Universiade since 1967 in Tokyo.
By Liam Morgan
Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz.