2024 SUMMER Paralympics just began and here’s what you need to know about it.
Scheduled to take place in Paris, France, the multi-sports parasports competition is set to begin from August 28 to September 8. In this year’s paralympics, the Philippines had six qualified athletes to participate in five sports: para swimming, para taekwondo, para archery, wheelchair racing, and javelin throw.
What is Paralympics
The Paralympics includes Olympic-style games dedicated for athletes with disabilities. Deriving from the word “parallel” it exhibits the close proximity nature with the Olympics Games.
The word ‘Paralympic’ came from the Greek preposition ‘para’ that means ‘beside or alongside’ with the combination word of “Olympic.” Paralympics are the parallel games to the Olympics. This also illustrated how the two movements exist side by side.
In the Paralympics, the athletes are grouped based on their impairments including physical and visual impairments such as limb deficiency, short stature, and blindness among others. The category also determines who athletes compete against and which sports to take part in.
Just like the Olympics, the sports category within the Paralympics aren’t limited as athletes gets to participate in a variety of games such as Athletics, Archery, Badminton, Swimming and many more.
Games to watch in the Paralympic
Para swimming
In Para Swimming, the athletes will be competing in the similar race that able-bodied athletes participate in. This includes swimming in backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle, and individual-medley events from the distance of 50 to 400 meters.
Unlike with the Olympic pools, the Paralympic swimming pools are slightly smaller with only eight lanes in the line. In terms of accommodating different levels of disability, swimmers are classified into sports classes.
Para taekwondo
The matches within the Para Taekwondo are held in one-round contests that lasts up to five minutes. The participants will be wearing protective equipment and “sensor socks” that will determine if a point is scored when hitting their opponent.
The points are only given when the participant hits the opponent’s torso. The point basis of this includes when athletes get two points for a regular kick, three points for a turning kick, and four points for a spinning kick.
Moreover, unlike in Olympics’s taekwondo–in Para taekwondo, the athletes are prohibited from throwing a kick on their opponent’s head.
Para archery
In the Para archery, the players are also shooting in the same rounds, distance, and events like the Olympic athletes. The only difference from it is that in Para archers, it is arranged into two classes: one are the ones competing in wheelchairs whose arms–to some degree loss of muscle strength and coordination.
Meanwhile the others are those who can compete in a wheelchair, standing up, or leaning on a stool. This group are the ones who have extremely limited movement in their trunk and limbs with a functional arm or balance issues.
In the para archery competition, the ranking round would be where players would shoot 72 arrows over the distance of 50 or 70 meters. They’ll also have four minutes to shoot their six arrows.
Wheelchair racing
Within the wheelchair racing, athletes can participate in four categories: sprint distance of 100m, 200m, and 400m, middle distances of 800m and 1500m, long distances of 5000m and 10,000m and relay races of 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m.
Javelin throw
The same thing is also done with Javelin throw in terms of the same thing with the Olympics, however, the athletes are divided into classes based on the type of their disabilities.
In the men’s javelin throw, the athlete uses an 800g 2.6m long javelin while the women use a 600g 2.2-2.3m long javelin.
The athletes will run down a 30m long track and will throw the javelin with all their might down a field. The athletes will only score when it lands first in a 29 degree area.
