The Tokyo 2020 Paralympics begin on Tuesday 24th August.
The first edition of the Paralympic Games took place in Rome, in 1960.
On that occasion, Italy won 29 golds, 28 silvers and 23 bronzes. Total: 80 medals and first place in the medal table. That remains the record edition of blue medals at the Paralympics.
22 sports disciplines present in Tokyo, with the news of badminton and taekwondo.
Most sports are common between Olympics and Paralympics, including athletics, swimming, Paralympic volleyball, wheelchair basketball, and wheelchair rugby.
Two disciplines, boccia and goalball, are present exclusively at the Paralympics.
The blue delegation
In Tokyo there will be 4,521 athletes with all types of disabilities (physical, sensory, intellectual) from 162 countries.
In this edition, Italy will be present with 63 athletes and 52 athletes. For the first time, more women than men.
The flag bearers will be the fencer Bebe Vio and the swimmer Federico Morlacchi.
In the blue delegation, he is not missing even this time Francesca Porcellato, 51 years old, the greatest paraplegic athlete in the world, now in her 11th Paralympics, between athletics, Nordic skiing and handbike.
And there would also be Alex Zanardi …
What’s the story?
The name Paralympics is intended to indicate an event that takes place in parallel, alongside the Olympics.
The Paralympic Games were inspired by the “Stoke Mandeville Games“, a tournament organized in Great Britain in 1948 for 16 athletes, men and women in wheelchairs, some of them veterans of the Second World War. They competed in archery.
The idea came to Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who had headed the spinal injury unit at a Stoke Mandeville hospital, where war veterans were treated.
What are the criteria for para-sports?
Paralympic athletes compete in different categories within a sport discipline, based on their particular impairment.
The Paralympic movement covers ten types of impairments, which fall into three categories: physical impairments, visual impairments and intellectual impairments.
Some sports are open to athletes of all categories, while others are reserved for specific disabilities.
Within each category, athletes are assessed to check if they meet a minimum level of disability, to ensure fair competition, although there have been several controversies in recent years.
In some sports such as athletics, Paralympic athletes are placed in a certain sporting class, pitting them against athletes with similar disabilities to ensure fair competition.
Athletes can be reclassified over the course of their life if their disability situation changes.
Who is attending? There is the Afghan flag, but not the athletes
Tokyo is the first city to host the Paralympics twice (it happened as early as 1964).
Just a week before the Games, the Afghanistan team – made up of just two athletes – announced that they would not be able to participate due to the unrest in the country.
The Organizing Committee, however, has decided to wave the Afghan flag anyway during the Opening Ceremony, as a sign of solidarity for the athletes who cannot be present.
The flag of Afghanistan will be waved by a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Games will also be characterized by the presence of a refugee team, made up of six athletes, including the Syrian Alia Issa, the first female Paralympic refugee athlete.
China has dominated the medal table since Athens 2004, with Britain often in second place and the United States and Ukraine battling for third.
With the shadow of Covid
on 23 July, the day of the Olympics Opening Ceremony, in Tokyo there were 4,082 cases of Covid, while last Saturday the figure was more than sixfold: 25,380.
Alarming figures that are also reflected in the Paralympic “bubble”.
Two days before the competitions, the number of Covid positives rose to 131 among those involved in the Paralympics (including four athletes and ten journalists).
On Sunday 22 August another 30 new positives were found, the highest number since the Paralympic athletes arrived in Tokyo.
As in the Olympics, most of the events will take place behind closed doors to minimize the risk of contagion.
An exception was made for a school program that will take students to events, but some areas of the country have already made it known that they will not participate due to the increasing cases of Covid in Japan.
Athletes will face rigorous measures during their stay and are only allowed to move between their accommodation, training sites and event venues for the Games.
They will be tested daily, with confirmed positive cases placed in isolation and unable to compete in their own races.
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