The Paralympic Games close the Tokyo 2020 sporting event.
Without an audience due to the coronavirus pandemic, as happened in the Olympic Games, the capital of Japan will hold the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games between Tuesday 24 and Sunday 5 September, with the participation of 57 Argentine athletes.
The sprinter Yanina Martnez, the only gold medalist in Ro 2016, and the judoka Fabin Ramrez, double medalist (silver in Atlanta 1996 and bronze in Beijing 2008) and who will play their sixth Games, will be the Argentine flag bearers in the opening ceremony of the 16th . edition of the Paralympics.
Argentina will participate in 11 disciplines: athletics, cycling, boccia, football for the blind, judo, swimming, para-canoeing, rowing, tennis, table tennis and taekwondo (being paralympic for the first time and will have Juan Samorano as the only Argentine representative).
The “albiceleste” delegation will not be represented in basketball, weightlifting, badminton, shooting, goalball, equestrian, fencing, triathlon, quad rugby, archery and seated vley.
DeporTV, the public sports channel, on television and its different digital platforms, will have six hours of live broadcasts and, in addition, will make a daily program with a summary of the activities every day from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The Paralympic Games close the Tokyo 2020 sporting event.
In the Ro 2016 Paralympics, Argentina won a total of 5 medals (1 gold, 1 silver and 3 bronze) and 35 diplomas, which gave it the 54th place in the medal table. China finished first with 239 medals (107 golds) and the United Kingdom (147) and Ukraine (117) completed the podium.
Rosario Yanina Martnez, Parapan American and world medalist, prevailed in the T36 class 100 meter flat test (athletes with cerebral palsy sequelae) and won the gold medal in Ro 2016, thus cutting a 20-year streak for Argentina without getting that medal.
At the Games in Brazil five years ago, Hernn Urra was silver in the shot put and Hernn Barreto won two bronze medals in the 100 and 200 meter sprints in the T35 category. The third bronze was won by Los Murcilagos.
The football team for the blind, who has just won the Tokyo Grand Prix for the third time, will seek in that city to get back on the podium and -as maximum objective- his first gold medal in the competition after silver in Athens 2004 and the bronze medals in Beijing 2008 and Ro 2016.
The Murcilagos (first in the international ranking) will start their soccer competition 5 on August 29 and will share a zone with Morocco (African champion), Spain (European champion) and Thailand. In the other zone will be Japan, Brazil (Olympic champion), China and France. The best two of each group will go to the semifinals and from there will begin the decisive stages for medals.
Of the 57 Argentine athletes, among a total of 4,400 athletes from around the world, Gabriel Copola from Buenos Aires, in adapted table tennis, will be the first to compete on Tuesday 24, at 21 in our country (there are 12 hours difference with Tokyo). A few minutes later, the first woman to make her debut will be the Cordovan swimmer Elizabeth Noriega (Tuesday, at 9:08 p.m.).
The Paralympic Movement began to develop after the Second World War, with the aim of attending to the large number of war veterans and civilians injured by the war, although it was only in 1960 that the first Paralympic Games were held in Rome. Italy, with the participation of 400 athletes from 23 countries.
Since then they have been held every four years without interruption: Tokyo 1964, Tel-Aviv 1968, Heidelberg 1972, Toronto 1976, Arnhem 1980, New York 1984 and Sel 1988.
In 1989 the International Paralympic Committee was officially founded, as a non-profit organization, in Düsseldorf,
Germany. From that moment on, it was that Committee that carried out the Paralympic Games in the same venues as the Olympic Games: Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016 and now Tokyo 2020. (postponed for a year due to the pandemic).
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