Six Spanish swimmers have earned their ticket for the Paris ’24 Paralympic Games

The General Assembly of the Spanish Paralympic Committee approved at its meeting this Wednesday a battery of measures related to the Paris 2024 Games, including the new ADOP Plan, budgets, hospitality and communication plans and the minimum qualifying marks of athletics and swimming, confirming the recent records of Nuria Marqués, Anastasiya Dmytriv, María Delgado, Nahia Zudaire, Toni Ponce and Íñigo Llopis.

According to the document ratified in the telematic Assembly, where Infanta Elena, Honorary President of the entity was present, there are six swimmers who have already obtained their ticket to Paris after reaching the minimum grade A after December 15. November, date of entry to force of these standards.

These are Nuria Marqués, Anastasiya Dmytriv, María Delgado, Nahia Zudaire, Toni Ponce and Íñigo Llopis. In addition, six other athletes have a minimum B, less demanding, which does not guarantee participation in the Games unless all places with a minimum A are not filled. They are Teresa Perales, Sarai Gascón, José Antonio Marí, Jacobo Garrido, Beatriz Lérida and Ivan Salguero.

So far, the Spanish Paralympic team has achieved 41 qualifying places for the Paris 2024 Games in a total of eight sports disciplines. Nine of them are equivalent to swimming, five men’s and four women’s, achieved at the 2023 Manchester World Cup. The rest of the quota will be assigned through the global proration system and will be communicated to the countries on February 16. To distribute them to Spanish swimmers, the same system of minimum grades A and B will be followed.

The modality that currently has the most athletes, twelve, is wheelchair basketball, whose men’s team qualified by reaching the final of the European Championship in Rotterdam last summer. The women’s team, which finished third, will have to wait for the play-off tournament in Osaka (Japan) in April, where eight teams will fight for the four remaining spots.

In athletics, Spain has secured ten places in the 2023 World Cup in Paris, seven of them nominal: Yassine Ouhdadi, Adiaratou Iglesias, Gerard Descarrega, Sara Andrés, Nagore Folgado, Álvaro del Amo and Joan Munar, although they all should endorse their good form in 2024.

At the Kobe World Athletics Championships, scheduled for mid-May, there will be a new distribution of quotas that, like in swimming, will be shared across countries by the lowest A and B grades. For now, marathoner Alberto Suárez is the only athlete who has obtained the lowest B.

The Canoeing World Cup in August left six tickets for Spain: two for women in kayak KL2 and KL3, and four for men in KL1 and KL3 and in canoe VL2 and VL3. Once added to the achievements of the 2024 World Cup, it will be the Royal Spanish Canoeing Federation that will designate the athletes best prepared to conquer them.

Four other sports currently have a single qualified representative: cycling, taekwondo, shooting and archery.

In cycling, a place has been awarded to Spain for the 2022 combined ranking of Countries, but we have to wait until July 1, 2024 for the world list to be published with the final assignment. Again, the Spanish Federation will appoint the members of the national team.

Juan Antonio Saavedra is, once again, the first athlete to get a ticket to Paris and he did it at the Shooting World Cup in Changwon (South Korea) last May. Other shooters still have a chance to qualify for the European Championships in Granada and the World Cup in Korea.

Spain also secured a place in the archery World Championships, in the men’s compound bow event. The Dubai World Qualifying Tournament in early March is the next and final option to expand the selection.

In addition, Dalia Santiago has already obtained the first Spanish female participation in taekwondo, after finishing third in the world list that will be published this January 1. Between February and May there will also be a continental qualifying tournament that will end the quota distribution .

Ten sports options

The Spanish Paralympic team still has options to be represented in ten other sports and thus reach 18 of the 22 parts of the Paralympic program. However, five-a-side football for the blind, goalball, wheelchair rugby and sitting volleyball have been discontinued.

In the seven modalities, the classification will depend only on the international ranking that will be published in 2024: equestrian (March 4), badminton (April 2), fencing (May 31), judo (June 24), weightlifting (June 26), triathlon (July 1) and wheelchair tennis (July 15).

In rowing, the Spanish athletes will compete in the continental qualifying regatta in Hungary, at the end of April. And in two other sports, the system is mixed: in boccia the list will be published on January 1 and a world qualifying tournament will be held in March, and in table tennis the list will be published on April 1, but tickets were also distributed at the pre-Olympic tournament in May.

The competition program of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will include the same sports as in Tokyo 2020. At the Japanese event, Spain competed in 16 of the 22 disciplines and contributed 142 athletes, 127 with disabilities and 15 support.