Greater competition opportunities for women and athletes with high support needs at Paris 2024 Paralympics

Friday’s (19 November) announcement follows the IPC Governing Board’s* approval of the final medal events programme and athlete quotas for the next Paralympic Games following a lengthy consultation exercise with international federations.

In total the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will feature a maximum of 4,400 Para athletes who will compete in 549 medal events across 22 Para sports.

The Games will include a record 235 medal events for women, eight more than at Tokyo 2020. This number also represents a 28 percent increase on the 183 medal events for female athletes at the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games.

In addition to more medal events, there will be at least 1,859 slots for female athletes, 77 more than Tokyo 2020. This record number is almost double the 990 women that took part at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. The overall number of participating females at Paris 2024 could increase further as there are 339 gender-free slots for the Games.

Supporting the IPC membership’s desire to increase competition opportunities for athletes with high support needs, the number of boccia medal events will increase by more than a half, from 7 in Tokyo to 11 in Paris. There will also be more competition opportunities for athletes with high support needs in Para judo and Para rowing.

The IPC has standardised the competition format across all five team sports in the Paralympic programme to ensure all events feature eight teams. Such a move has created new opportunities for athletes in other sport events and, in line with Olympic Agenda 2020+5, reduced costs for the Organising Committee as one less competition venue is required.

The list of medal events and athlete quotas can be found at https://bit.ly/3qNYvZT.

Other key highlights of the Paris 2024 medal events programme and athlete quotas include:

– After successful Paralympic debuts this summer, Para badminton will have 16 medal events, two more than at Tokyo 2020, while the number of Para taekwondo medal events will increase from six to 10. Para taekwondo will also have 66 per cent more athlete slots.

– In boccia, the sport will have eight gender specific medal events, having previously only offered mixed or open competition.

– Para canoe and Para triathlon, two sports that first appeared at Rio 2016, will both have more medal events than at Tokyo 2020 – 10 and 11 respectively.

– Two sports – Para athletics and Para swimming – have had the number of their medal events reduced by three and five events respectively. They have also had their number of athlete slots reduced.

– 10 Para sports will all have more athlete slots available for women compared to Tokyo 2020.

Andrew Parsons, IPC President, said: “For the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games we are increasing the number of competition opportunities for women and athletes with high support needs, fulfilling two ambitions of the Paralympic Movement.

“To almost double the number of women taking part in the Paralympic Games in less than 25 years is rapid progress but the fact we do not yet have gender parity underlines that there is still much work to do.

“In addition to providing more opportunities for athletes with high support needs across three sports, Paris 2024 will also have a uniform look to all team sports with eight teams participating in each competition. This helps improve efficiencies for the organisers, drives greater gender parity and increases competition opportunities for athletes in other sports.

“Huge credit needs to go to all international federations who are part of the Paris 2024 Paralympic programme. All have made great progress in recent years and piecing together the final medal events programme and quotas was a complex exercise.

“With the medal events programme and athlete quotas now announced, National Paralympic Committees and athletes can start their preparations in earnest for what will be spectacular Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.”

To get an overview of Paris 2024 Paralympic Games medal event programme and athlete quotas in numbers, please visit: https://bit.ly/3DwUrk8

* New Athletes’ Council Chairperson, Jitske Visser, was not involved with this matter due to her ongoing participation as an active athlete in one of the sports.