What are the Paralympic Games?
Eleven days of elite competition across 22 sports. With no fewer than 549 medals at stake, 4,400 athletes will be taking part from 128 different nations, each of them with a physical or cognitive disability.
When does it start?
The opening ceremony for the 17th summer Paralympic Games will take place in Paris on Wednesday 28 August from 7pm UK time. As with the Olympics this summer, the ceremony will be staged not in a stadium but in the city, with the location shifting from the River Seine to the Champs Élysées. A “people’s parade” will be accessible to the general public before arriving at the Place de la Concorde, formerly the site of the Olympic “urban park”, which will then stage the climactic portion of the evening and the lighting of the Paralympic torch. The sporting action begins the next day.
Where will the sport be played?
A number of the venues you fell in love with earlier in the summer are set to return, with 18 of the 35 Olympic locations being repurposed for the Paralympics. The Stade de France and La Défense Arena will once again host athletics and swimming, respectively, and cycling will return to the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome. The sand has been removed from the Eiffel Tower stadium so that blind football can replace beach volleyball. The only event to be held outside the French capital will be the para-shooting in Châteauroux.
What time will the action be on?
You have probably already adjusted your body clock to the challenges of consuming sport from the French capital and for those in the UK it’s not very hard (it’s an hour ahead). The sport will begin at 8.30am in the morning local time and end at 10.30pm.
What are the key events?
Much like the Olympics, the centrepiece of the Paralympic Games is the track and field programme. The competition begins on Friday 30 August, runs for nine days and produces medals every day. Both Saturdays are particularly stuffed, with 7 September boasting no fewer than 22 finals over its two sessions. Other marquee events to look out for will be the wheelchair rugby final on Monday 2 September and finals day in the para-rowing at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium on Sunday 1 September.
Which British stars should we look out for?
Of the 215 athletes that form the ParalympicsGB team this year there are 81 debutants, meaning a great chance for new heroes to be made. Among those fresh names, look out for 19-year-old cyclist Archie Atkinson (racing in the C4 pursuit), the 13-year-old swimming prodigy Iona Winnifrith (going in the SB7 100m breaststroke and SM7 individual medley) and Rachel Choong, world champion in para-badminton who is making her debut at the Games after her classification was finally included in competition.
What is a ‘classification’?
One significant feature of disability sport is that athletes are selected for competition based on the nature and severity of their disability. In order to ensure fair competition, all athletes must go through the classification process where they are assessed by technical and medical experts to ensure they are selected in an appropriate category. This is one of the reasons why there are so many medals; there are dozens of different classifications, especially in track and field.
Classification can be the cause of huge disappointment, with athletes sometimes being excluded from competition because their impairment is not judged to be great enough. It is also a political issue, with a debate over whether there should be more classifications in order to allow more inclusion, or fewer to enhance competitiveness.
How can I watch the Games?
There are still as many as 500,000 tickets available for the Games, with particular availability in track and field at the 80,000 capacity Stade de France. There are also extra tickets expected to be made available at some of the sold-out sports: wheelchair fencing, para-taekwondo, para-cycling, para-equestrian, triathlon, para-shooting and blind football.
In the UK, Channel 4 is promising its most extensive coverage yet, with over 1,300 hours of live broadcasting and up to 18 concurrent live streams running on its YouTube channel. It will also be its most inclusive to date; with subtitles for every broadcast and closed audio description on Channel 4 at primetime, while live sport on More4 and Channel 4 Streaming on weekday afternoons will include British sign language live signing. The BBC, meanwhile, will be providing radio coverage.
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