The 2024 Paris Paralympics will see more than 4,400 athletes competing in 549 events across 22 sports.
After a two-week break, Paris once again readies itself to host the best athletes in the world with the 2024 Paralympic Games set to get underway on Wednesday. The quadrennial event will take place from August 28 to September 8.
A total of 18 of the 35 venues used for the Olympics will be used for the Paralympics with more than 4,400 athletes set to compete in 549 events across 22 sports.
The term Paralympics indicates an event taking place in parallel with the Olympics.
The idea of an athletic event for people with disabilities came up after the second World War in England. Sir Ludwigg Guttmann, a neurologist who fled to England from Nazi Germany before the war is credited with the founding of organised sports for people with physical disablities.
While working as a neurologist at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Guttmann organised the Stoke Mandeville Games for war veterans at the hospital to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics.
The first Paralympics were held in Rome 1960. In 2001, the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee signed an agreement that ensured that cities who bid to host the Olympic Games would also be mandated to hold the Paralympic Games.
The Games will open with a ceremony at the Place de la Concorde, the square in the centre of Paris where skateboarding and other urban sports took place during the Olympics.
Just like the Olympics ceremony on the River Seine, the ceremony on Wednesday takes place away from the main stadium for the first time at a Paralympics.
The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel.
Theatre director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympics opening ceremony, said there was a deep symbolism in putting the Paralympics ceremony in the centre of the French capital – a city whose Metro system, in particular, is completely unadapted to the needs of wheelchair users.
The Paris Paralympics will feature 22 sports with 20 of them being common with the Olympic Games. The Paralympics feature two sports which are unique only for para athletes — goalball and boccia.
The Paralympic movement covers 10 impairment types that fall broadly into three categories: physical impairments, vision impairment and intellectual impairment.
Some sports are open to athletes in all categories, while others are reserved for specific impairments.
Within each category, athletes are assessed to see whether they meet a minimum impairment level, to ensure a fair playing field – although there have been controversies over some placements in recent years.
Many visually impaired athletes use assistants to compete. In track events, athletes use guide runners who are linked to the athlete via a strap. This helps the athlete when running along the curve of the track.
