The 17th edition of the Paralympic Games takes place in the French capital with a record number of delegations and more women than ever before. Between this Wednesday, August 28, with the opening ceremony, and September 8, some 4,400 athletes will compete in 548 sporting events. The event organizers expect that some 2.8 million spectators will fill the stands of the 18 competition venues. Among the 168 delegations that will compete will be the Refugee Paralympic Team (RPT), made up of eight members, and the group of Neutral Paralympic Athletes, made up of 88 Russian athletes and eight Belarusians who will not be able to represent their countries, after the veto imposed on both nations by the International Paralympic Committee due to the military incursion in Ukraine. Kiribati, Eritrea, and Kosovo will make their Paralympic debut in Paris, while Spain will be present with 150 athletes. The competition can be followed on RTVE.
In Paris, 1,983 women will compete – 45% of the total athletes – up from the previous proportion of 42% set at Tokyo 2020. In Sydney in 2000, there were just 988 women athletes. In addition, the Games will feature more medal events for women than ever before and 8 more than were contested in Tokyo in 2020. The female quota will be felt strongly on Sunday 8 September, the final day of competition, when the majority of events will be women’s. Fourteen medals will be awarded on that day: one in wheelchair basketball, four in powerlifting, four in athletics, and five in canoeing.
Also Read: Carlos Alcaraz Seeks to Dethrone Reigning Champion Djokovic at a US Open Amidst Many Murmurs About the Sinner Case
Among the 22 sports that make up the competition calendar, the most notable are the 100m wheelchair race, wheelchair basketball tournaments, blind football tournaments, and wheelchair tennis doubles events. Adaptive cycling will be the only competition with more than one category, as it will be held on track and road. The events will not begin on the opening day, but one day later, when the competition for medals in eleven disciplines begins. On each of the 11 days that make up the schedule, there will be medal awards, starting with adaptive swimming, Taekwondo, and track cycling.
There will be no new disciplines making their debut at this edition of the Paralympic Games, so the newest sport in the competition will be adaptive badminton, which debuted at Tokyo 2020, and whose preliminary phases will begin on 29 August. A day later, blind football will begin, in which a hegemonic Brazil will seek to remain the only delegation to have won gold in this sport since it was included in the Paralympics in 2004. Athletics, which will be held at the legendary Stade de France, and swimming, which will be contested in the already famous La Défense swimming pool, will have 10 days of competition, almost the entire period of the Games.
The Spanish delegation: 139 athletes, 40 debutants
Spain will be in the French capital with a delegation of 139 athletes, who will be responsible for making the dream of surpassing the 36 medals won in Tokyo 2020 come true. Spain has embraced the trend of greater female representation with 36% of athletes in its squad, that is, 54 athletes. The average age is 33.2 years, with Mari Carmen Paredes being the oldest, participating in her third Games at 61 years of age, and Tasy Dmytriv, the youngest, at 16 years of age. 43 Spanish athletes will make their Paralympic debut in Paris.
Among the national delegations, swimming legend Teresa Perales stands out. She has become the best Spanish Paralympic athlete, with a medal count of 27 medals (seven gold, 10 silver, and ten bronze), so this year she will have the chance to equal the most medallists in Olympic history. Michael Phelps, who has 28 medals (23 of them gold) also attracting attention is Jose Manuel Ruiz, who will participate in his eighth Paralympic Games this year – he has not missed any since Atlanta 1996. The table tennis player has a list of achievements with five Paralympic medals (silver and bronze in Sydney 2000; silver in Beijing 2008; bronze in London 2012, and silver in Rio 2016).
The largest delegation is China, which has topped the medal table at every Paralympic Games since Athens 2004, with 282 athletes (124 men and 158 women). Brazil is second with 255 athletes, followed by France with 237. France will be competing in all sports and has 82 women, the largest number ever sent to the Paralympic Games and more than double the number competing at Tokyo 2020. The United States has registered 220 athletes and Great Britain 201.
The stars of the event are Markus Rehm, the German athlete who won the last 3 Paralympic long jump titles with a world record of 8.62m, the Brazilian football team, which has won 27 consecutive matches to become five-time Paralympic champions; and the Dutch tennis player Diede de Groot, a gold medallist in singles at the Paralympic Games and winner of four Grand Slams in singles, making her the first tennis player in history – not just in a wheelchair – to win consecutive calendar Grand Slams.
