Paris dressed up for the new edition of the Paralympic Games

From this Wednesday, August 28 and until next Sunday, September 8, Paris accepts the seventeenth edition of the Summer Paralympic Games. A few weeks after the Olympic Games, the French capital once again dressed up for another of the great mass events in world sport.

There will be twelve sports days, eleven of which have sports competitions, which welcome approx. 4400 athletes from all over the world. The total participation quota for the Tokyo Games has been maintained, although there have been significant changes since increasing female presence to continue promoting sports in these modalities. Therefore, another of the great novelties is the protection of athletes with greater disabilities.

A sum of twenty two sports modalities will be represented at the Games once again with the most emblematic place in the city of Paris as the main stage. In his attempt to bring sports closer to its citizensthe French capital once again presents its beautiful landmarks as places for a competition that will be shared in seventeen locations and will have the Palace of Versailles or Les Invalides as some of its main points.

This Wednesday the competition will start at a opening ceremony at the Place de la Concordewith a parade along the Champs-Élysées that will be one of the great moments of the Games. The Stade de France has been adopted as the venue for the closing, with a philosophy similar to that of the Olympic event held a few days ago. Beyond the urban nature of the venues, another comparison to the Olympic Games is that the emblem and mascot used for them have been repeated, the latter being a Phryge with a prosthetic leg.

So, with marriage as one of the great symbols of the event, The Spanish team arrived with the aim of consolidating itself as one of the leading nations of the event. Spain is ranked twelfth in the historical medal table of the Paralympic Games, a position it will try to improve and improve with a team made up of 150 athletes, eleven of them support athletes. In his team, the fact stands out that, despite the strong predominance of men, it is the second national team with the highest number of women (54)just behind Barcelona 1992, thanks to the growth of their participation, especially in sports such as athletics and swimming.

The goal of the Spanish team is to surpassing the 36 medals achieved three years ago at the Tokyo Games. Then achieved 9 gold, 15 silver and 12 bronze, an ambitious starting point to try to continue growing in Paris. To this end, Spain will have a strong support team in a headquarters close to Spanish territory, with the aim of maximum performance on the part of the athletes.

Among them will once again be some big names in Spanish sport. The eternal Teresa Peraleswith twenty-seven medals under his belt, is looking to equal Michael Phelps’ record of twenty-eight Games podiums. Another great leader of the Spanish delegation was the paddler Jose Manuel Ruizwho will add his eighth participation in the Games to become the Spanish athlete with the most participation. The most noticeable loss is that of the athlete Gerard Descarregainjured, but Spain will have many other references.

Their standard bearersthe judoka Martha Arce and paddle him too Alvaro Valerawill lead the Spanish delegation. It will have a very strong swimming team with many big names (Toni Ponce, Núria Marquès, Marta Fernández, Sarai Gascón, Òscar Salguero or Íñigo Llopis, among many others) and with athletics team (Adiaratou Iglesias, Yassine Ouhdadi, Héctor Cabrera, Kim López, Desirée Vila…) equally many.

Another large group of triathlon (Susana Rodríguez or Eva Moral), great asset to cycling (Alfonso Cabello, Sergio Garrote or Ricardo Ten, among others) and a large male team of table tennis (Jordi Morales and Jorge Cardona also joins Valera and Ruiz, among others) will be some of the mainstays, but not the only ones, of the Spanish team. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games begin and Spain is ready.