The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will feature a record number of medal events and athlete slots for women.
Paris 2024 will be the 17th edition of the Paralympic Games which debuted in 1960 – under the name of the ‘Stoke Mandeville Games.’ It will feature a maximum of 4,400 Para athletes, who will compete in 549 medal events across 22 Para sports.
10 of those sports will feature more female athletes than see at Tokyo 2020.
The Games will include 235 medal events for women, eight more than at Tokyo 2020. It represents a 28% increase on the 183 medal events for female athletes seen at the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games in Greece.
There will also be at least 1859 slots for female athletes, which is 77 more than Tokyo 2020. The record number is almost double the number of women who took part at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.
The overall number of female athletes could increase further as there are 339 gender-free slots for the Games across several sports.
The announcement came following the approval by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Governing Board of the finalised medal events programme for the Paris 2024 Games.
The IPC also revealed that in response to requests from international federations there will now be more opportunities for athletes with high support needs at Paralympic Games.
The number of medal events in boccia will increase from 7-11, while there will also be more competition opportunities for athletes with significant impairments in para judo and para rowing.
“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,” stated IPC President Andrew Parsons. “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.”
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will run from 28th August to 8th September in France