Squiz Shortcuts - The Paris Paralympics

Your Shortcut to the Paris Paralympics

Australia is riding high after its best-ever performance at an Olympic Games in Paris. So grab your green and gold again - the Paralympics are here - and in this Squiz Shortcut we’ll get you up to speed with:

• how they work

• the sports involved

• and the Aussies to watch out for.

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Squiz the Shortcut

When are the Paralympics on?
The Opening Ceremony kicked off at 4am this morning, Aussie Eastern time. The sporting events will run for the next 11 days, and just like the Olympics a couple of weeks ago, most will be happening late at night/early in the morning for us.  

Can Paris back up the great job they did hosting the Olympics?
By the looks of the Opening Ceremony, they absolutely can. The iconic venues we saw used in the Olympics a couple of weeks ago have been repurposed for the Paralympics. 

Remind me, which ones?
The Grand Palais - that’s the exhibition building with the glass roof - will be home to wheelchair fencing and para-taekwondo, the equestrian events will be in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, and the blind football will be played in front of the Eiffel Tower. 

How about the para-triathlon?
We know where you’re going with this… The swimming part of the para-triathlon will be held in the River Seine, so let’s hope it doesn’t rain in the days beforehand - otherwise the “stinky Seine” might strike again…

How many nations compete in the Paralympics?
This year there’s a record 164 nations competing, with nearly 550 medals up for grabs. 

How did the Games start?
They grew from an idea by neurologist Sir Ludwig Guttman who used sport to rehabilitate World War II veterans with spinal injuries. He set up a competition with other hospitals in 1948 to coincide with the London Olympics, and over the next decade, his idea caught on. In 1960, when 400 wheelchair athletes from 23 countries competed in Rome at the same time as the Olympics, they became known officially as the Paralympics.

How do they work?
It’s a bit different to the Olympics due to the range of the athletes’ impairments. To start with, the athletes are grouped according to their limitations - kind of like how people are sorted by gender, age and weight in some sports to make sure the competition is fair. Athletes are assessed as either physically, intellectually, or vision impaired, and their disability has to be permanent for them to be deemed eligible. Then they’re put into further categories within their sport.

What sort of categories?
Every sport has its own system, but usually for each event, there’ll be a letter and a number next to it. The letter usually matches the event, so swimming has an S and jumping events in athletics have a J. The number generally shows the classification of the athletes’ impairments - and usually the lower the number, the greater the impairment level. That’s assessed by a panel of medical and technical experts in each sport.

Are the sports the same as in the Olympics?
The number of Paralympic sports has grown from 8 when the Games first began to 22 for Paris. A lot of them are similar to the Olympics, like swimming and track and field, and some of them you might have heard of - like blind football, sitting volleyball and wheelchair rugby - but maybe you just aren’t sure how they’re played.

Wheelchair rugby sounds fierce…
Yep, its nickname is ‘murder-ball’ because the competition is so intense. It’s played on a basketball court and it’s no exaggeration to say the court gets turned into a battlefield. The Aussie team is called the Steelers, and as a mixed-gender sport the team is made up of men and women, and this year we’re hoping to finish on the podium after coming 4th in Tokyo.

How many Paralympians are we sending to Paris?
We’ll have 160 para-athletes competing in 17 events. That squad includes 35 track and field para-athletes, 30 para-swimmers and 8 para-rowers. We also have 61 newbies making their Paralympics debut.

What’s our form like?
We finished 8th at the Tokyo Paralympics with 21 gold medals and 80 medals overall - and that result was a little bit down on our ranking of 5th in the 4 Games before that. Our best-ever Paralympics result was in Sydney, where we won a whopping 63 gold medals and took out the whole Games. 

I’ve got my green and gold ready. Who am I looking out for?
One of the debutantes to watch out for will be para-swimmer Alexa Leary. She was a promising triathlete until a horrific cycling crash in 2021 left her with permanent brain damage, a punctured lung, broken ribs, a fractured skull and a shattered leg. She spent more than 100 days in intensive care and her family were told to say their goodbyes 8 times, so her recovery from that alone has been remarkable. But she’s since trained as an elite para-swimmer, and last year she won gold in the 100m freestyle S9 at the World Para-Swimming Championships.

What a legend… Who else is repping us in the pool?
So many talented swimmers, but to mention just a few… Lakeisha Patterson will be defending her 400m freestyle S9 title from Tokyo, and Katja Dedekind is also chasing back-to-back gold in the 50m freestyle S13. Ben Hance is one of our male swimmers you’re likely to hear about. He’s the favourite in the 100m backstroke S14 after winning gold in Tokyo and also taking out the title at last year’s para-swimming championships. Also look out for Rowan Crothers who’s going for a second gold in the 50m freestyle S10 event. He’s prone to climbing up on the lane ropes when he wins…

And what about on the track?
Veteran para-athlete Madison de Rozario - who was one of our flag bearers along with para-swimmer Brenden Hall - is competing in his fifth Paralympics in Paris, racing in the 1,500m and 5km events. The 30yo will also be defending her para-marathon gold from Tokyo - but the Parisian streets have posed a unique challenge for the wheelchair athletes…

Because of the distracting smell of freshly baked croissants? 
Well, that too. But mostly the cobblestones. We don’t have an abundance of 18th-century cobblestones in Australia, so to get herself used to the feel of them, de Rozario has been practising by racing on the pavers in Sydney Olympic Park. In field events, we have long jumper Vanessa Low, who’ll be going for her third gold medal in a row, and in triathlon and road cycling we have a double-threat in Lauren Parker - she’s the current world champion in both sports and she’ll be racing in both in Paris.

Ok, I’m excited… What teams should I watch?
As well as the Steelers, our men’s wheelchair basketballers - the Rollers - have a good shot at a medal. They were unbeaten in their qualifying event, the Asia Oceania Zone Championships, so here’s hoping they can continue that winning streak… 

Anyone else to mention?
Another great success story is Aussie table tennis player Melissa Tapper who competes for us in both the Olympics and Paralympics. She’s one of only a dozen athletes who have ever achieved that dual status, and after making it to the round of 16 in the women’s singles in the Olympics, she’s looking to add a Paralympic gold medal to the silver she won in Tokyo.

I’m ready with my best cheering voice. Where can I watch?
Tune into the Paralympics for free in Australia on Channel 9 and 9Now, or stream them ad-free on Stan Sport. Go Aussies…

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