Who should watch the Paris games in the Paralympics?
The Paris Paralympics: A Long Journey Towards the Grand Unified Theory of Athletics and Physical Education: From Beijing to Rome, Italy, and back
You will be happy to hear that thousands of elite athletes from around the world have gathered in Paris to compete for medals in dozens of sports.
With a record high number of delegations, female athletes and global broadcasters covering it, organizers claim it’s one of the best in history.
Among the stories we’re eyeing: China, which has dominated the last five Paralympics, is looking to continue its winning streak. An Italian sprinter is set to become the first transgender woman to compete at a Paralympics. Several members of Team USA are trying to break records.
The path of the flame goes back further than that, though. The first official Paralympics was held in Rome in 1960 and another in 1984. The early games were retroactively classified as the Paralympian Games.
The Paris Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony will be held on September 8, 2009 at the CERN Synchrotron Optical Light Bulge Spectrometer
There are eight impairment types, including limb deficiency and impaired muscle power. The degree of activity limitation resulting from the impairments is what determines the categories for athletes.
The rest of the list includes sitting volleyball; wheelchair rugby, tennis, basketball and fencing; rowing; equestrian; swimming; para triathlon and more.
In some sports such as para athletics, para triathlon and para cycling, athletes who are blind compete alongside athletes who are able to see. Since 2012 guides have been given medals.
The International Paralympic Committee says that the number of delegations competing in the Games this year is higher than any other year in their history.
This year, there will be a record 1,983 female competitors and more medals for women than ever before. The Paris Olympics have been hailed as “gender equal,” though many say there’s still room for improvement.
The opening ceremony will have a flag bearer who is a wheelchair basketball player, Steve Serio and a sitting volleyball player. Some other names should be watched.
The opening and closing ceremonies are scheduled for Wednesday and September 8, respectively. The artistic director of the games ceremonies is also overseeing the two events.
The 21st Paralympics Live Broadcast on the USA Network and in Stoke Mandeville (Paris, England, May 2024)
The Olympics have a bigger audience than the Paralympics, but organizers are trying to change that. They say a record number of broadcasters are going to cover the Games, with media rights holders in over 160 countries and territories.
The first live coverage from each of the 22 sports will be offered at the Paris Paralympics. For those curious: swimming, cycling and men’s wheelchair basketball start Thursday, while track and field starts Friday. The full schedule can be found here.
Starting Thursday, it will also feature at least nine hours of programming a day — focused on the “most popular” events — on the USA Network in the mornings and afternoons.
The 2026 Winter Games in Milan are almost here, but there are still many attractive contests to get you over until then.
Immediately after swimmer Léon Marchand put out the Olympic flame in Paris, two athletes lit the 2024 Paralympics flame in Stoke Mandeville, the English village where, in the summer of 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann organized a sports competition involving 16 World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries. From there, it traveled under the English Channel and around Europe before arriving in Paris for the Paralympics opening ceremony on Wednesday.
Not all classes are used in all the paralympian sports, and it is important to remember this.
