With the Paris Olympics officially in the record books as of Aug. 11, it’s time to gear up for the Paris Paralympics. Popcorn? Check. Favorite fizzy beverages? Check. Viewing guide? Sports rosters? Understanding the athlete classification system?
Read on for what you need to know about the Paralympic Games, Aug. 28-Sept. 8.
A Paralympics primer
If you’re new to the Paralympics, or are looking for specific information about the Paris Games, a good place to start is the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) website.
Here you can read up on Paralympics history, from the Games’ official beginning in Rome in 1960, to the partnership between the IPC and the International Olympic Committee — starting in 1988 for the summer Games and 1992 for the winter Games — that set the Paralympics in the same cities that host the Olympics.
The IPC website is also a great place to learn about the 22 Paralympic sports to be contested this summer, including rules and athlete classifications, which are quite complex. As an example, there was a single 100-meter track event category for women in the Olympics. At the Paris Paralympics, there will be 13 different 100-meter track events for women, ranging from the T11 classification (for athletes with vision impairment), to T35 (coordination impairments: hypertonia, ataxia, and athetosis) to T64 (lower limb/s, competing with prosthesis affected by limb deficiency and leg-length difference).
The Team USA website offers more specific information on American athletes, including their competitive histories and bios, and you can virtually explore the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum (the physical museum is in Colorado Springs, Colorado).
Follow Canada’s Paralympic team via the Canadian Paralympic Committee website, where you can read athlete bios and sign up for the Can Crew newsletter.
Watch your favorite sports
The official Paralympics YouTube channel started hyping up fans on Aug. 11, just as the closing ceremony for the Paris Olympics was taking place. The International Paralympic Committee website’s “Where to Watch” page lists broadcasting partners according to continents and countries.
In the United States, watch the Games on NBC or via live streaming on Peacock.
In Canada, watch competitions via CBC Sports. The schedule of coverage, from the opening ceremony through para badminton, goalball, swimming, boccia, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby and more, is listed in the homepage’s Watch Guide.
A Fan’s Favorites
On a personal note, here’s what I’m looking forward to at this Paralympics:
— Wheelchair fencing: If fencing is an ebbing, flowing dance with swords, then wheelchair fencing dances to an entirely different, incredible level. That’s because while Olympic fencers can advance forward and retreat backward, the wheelchairs used by wheelchair fencers are, the IPC website noted, fixed in place at 110-degree angles.
Athletes compete with foil, epee, and saber in two classifications based on an athlete’s trunk control. With chairs secured to the ground, this kind of fencing is so much about upper-body flexibility, core strength, stability and control, in addition to quickness.
— Wheelchair rugby: Probably one of the better-known Paralympic sports due to the 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary “Murderball,” wheelchair rugby is fast paced and fun to watch. Individual athletes are classified with scores from 0.5 to 3.5 — the lower the score, the greater the upper-/lower-extremity impairment. Each rugby team fields four players at a time on the court, with a total classification score no higher than 8.0.
USA Wheelchair Rugby named its 12-athlete team in April, to be led by co-captains Chuck Aoki, in his fourth Paralympics, and Eric Newby, a three-time Paralympian.
Heads-up: USA and Canada compete in a preliminary wheelchair rugby round on Thurs., Aug. 29.
— Athletics/4×100-meter universal relay: The Olympics.com website describes this event as “a symbol of Paralympism,” noting that each team includes four athletes — two men and two women — with four different types of disabilities.
The first 100-meter leg is run by a visually impaired athlete; the second by an athlete with limb loss or upper-extremity impairment; the third by an athlete with cerebral palsy; and the fourth by a wheelchair racer.
The universal relay debuted at the Tokyo Paralympics (2021), where the American team, anchored by wheelchair racing legend Tatyana McFadden, set a new world record.
Image: istockphoto.com/John Webb
