Paris hosts Paralympic Games with record number of women and delegations | Sport

The 17th Paralympic Games will be held in the French capital with a record number of delegations and more women than ever. From this Wednesday, August 28, the opening ceremony, to September 8, some 44,000 athletes will take part in 548 sporting events. The event’s organisation expects around 2.8 million spectators to fill the stands of the 18 competition venues. Among the 168 delegations taking part in the competition will be the eight-member Paralympic Refugee Team (EPR) and the Neutral Paralympic Athlete Group, made up of 88 Russian and eight Belarusian athletes who will not be able to represent their country after the International Paralympic Committee vetoed both countries for their military intervention in Ukraine. Eritrea, Kiribati and Kosovo will be making their Paralympic debuts in the French capital, while Spain will send 150 athletes. The competition can be followed on the RTVE channel.

There will be 1,983 women competing in Paris, representing 45% of the total number of athletes, up from the previous 42% set at Tokyo 2020. Sydney 2000 had just 988 athletes. The Games will also see more medals for women than ever before: 235, eight more than Tokyo 2020. The women’s quota will be especially felt on Sunday, September 8, the final day of competition, when most of the events will be for them. There will be 14 medals up for grabs that day: one in wheelchair basketball, four in powerliftingfour in athletics and five in canoeing.

Among the 22 sports on the calendar are the 100m wheelchair sprint, wheelchair basketball, blind football and wheelchair tennis doubles. Adapted cycling will be the only event to have more than one category, as it will be held on both the track and road. The events will not begin on the opening day, but later, with the medals being awarded in eleven disciplines. Medals will be awarded on each of the 11 days of the programme, starting with adapted swimming, taekwondo and track cycling.

There will be no new disciplines at these Paralympics, so the last sport to compete will be adapted badminton, which will make its debut at Tokyo 2020, with the preliminary stages starting on August 29. A day later, blind football will begin, with hegemonic Brazil aiming 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 in the mythical Stade de France, and swimming, which will take place in the already famous La Défense pool, will have 10 days of competition, almost the entire duration of the Games.

Spanish delegation: 139 athletes, 40 debutants

Spain will arrive in the French capital with a delegation of 139 athletes who will be responsible for realizing the dream of surpassing the 36 medals won at Tokyo 2020. Spain has embraced the trend of increasing female representation: 36% of its athletes are women. , or 54 athletes. The average age is 33.2 years, with the oldest being Mari Carmen Paredes, who is taking part in her third Games at 61, and the youngest is Tasya Dmitrov, 16. 43 Spanish athletes will be making their Paralympic debut in Paris.

Among the national delegation, swimming legend Teresa Perales stands out, having become the best Spanish Paralympic athlete, with 27 metals in her medal count (seven gold, ten silver and ten Paralympic bronze), so this year she will have the opportunity to become the greatest medalist in Olympic history: Michael Phelps, who has 28 medals (23 of them gold). Also of note is José Manuel Ruiz, who will be taking part in his eighth Paralympic Games this year – he has not missed one since Atlanta 1996. The tennis player has five Paralympic medals to his credit (silver and bronze in Sydney 2000, silver in Beijing 2008, bronze in London 2012 and silver in Rio 2016).

The largest delegation comes from China, which has topped the medal count at every Paralympic Games since Athens 2004, and is taking part in this event with 282 athletes (124 men and 158 women). Brazil is second with 255 athletes, followed by France with 237. The French will compete in every event, and they will have 82 women, the largest number they have ever sent to a Paralympic Games and more than double the number competing at Tokyo 2020. The United States has 220 athletes registered, and the United Kingdom 201.

Markus Rehm, the German athlete who has won the last three Paralympic titles in the long jump, with a world record of 8.62 meters, promises to shine; the Brazilian football team, which has won 27 games in a row and has been crowned champions of the Paralympic Games five times; and the Dutch tennis player Diede de Groot, a Paralympic gold medalist in singles and winner of four Grand Slam singles tournaments, making her the first tennis player in history (not only in a wheelchair) to win Grand Slam tournaments in a row.

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