'Another touching stage' will be held. A prepared sports festival of heroes, opening ceremony on the streets of Champs-Elysees at the Paris Paralympics
The Paris Paralympics, a festival of disabled sports athletes around the world, will open.
The 2024 Paris Paralympic Games ( Paralympic Games) will open on the 29th (Korean time) and will be held for 12 days until the 8th of next month.
Paralympics is a combination of Paraplegia's 'para' and Olympics, which means paraplegia. However, since the establishment of the International Paralympic Committee in 1989, it has been used to mean parallel with the Olympics. It means that the disabled and the non-disabled will be together and will be held side by side with the Olympics. Players with spinal cord disorders, amputations and other disorders, visual impairments, brain lesions, and intellectual disabilities participate.
The Paralympics began with the initiative of Dr. Ludwig Gutman, a German neurosurgeon. He recalled a sporting competition for British veterans with spinal cord disorders who fought in World War II. It held an archery competition involving 16 wheelchair athletes in time for the 1948 London Olympics, and became the beginning of the Paralympics.
The competition held in Stokemanderville was diversified and more and more national players participated. The first Summer Paralympics were held in Rome in 1960. Since the 1988 Seoul Games, the Olympics and Paralympics have been held in the same place. Paris, which has hosted the Olympics for the first time in 100 years since 1924, is hosting the Paralympics for the first time.
The torch lit in Stoke Manderville on the 24th is divided into 12 and will be combined into one on the 28th after traveling around France. The opening ceremony, which begins at 3 a.m. on the 29th, will be held outdoors, just like the Olympics. The opening ceremony of the Olympics was held on the Seine River across Paris. The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games will be held on the Champs-Elysees Street, which connects the Arc de Triomphe and Concorde Square, where the Paralympic symbol 'Agitos' is hung.
More than 4,000 athletes from 182 of the 183 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) member countries will compete for 549 gold medals in 22 sports. North Korea, which competed in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, did not send a team.
Korea will send 177 athletes, including 83 athletes in 17 sports (46 men and 37 women). He participates in goalball, badminton, boccia, shooting, cycling, swimming, archery, weightlifting, judo, track and field, rowing, canoeing, table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon, wheelchair fencing, and wheelchair tennis.
Bae Dong-hyun, chairman of the BDH Foundation, who headed the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympic Games. Kim Young-gun (table tennis, Gwangju Metropolitan City Hall) and Lee Do-yeon (cycle, Sejong sports orthopedic surgeon) were appointed as male and female captains, and Choi Yong-beom (Canu, Dowon ENC) will be the flag bearer for the opening and closing ceremonies. Seo Min-gyu (Ansan City Sports Council for the Disabled), who was born in 2005, is the only 10, and Kim Ok-geum (Gwangju Metropolitan City Hall) is the oldest, born in 1960.
According to the Korea Sports Association for the Disabled, our team's goal is five gold medals and 20th in the overall ranking. He ranked 12th at the 2012 London Games, but fell to 20th at the 2016 Rio Games. At the 2020 Tokyo Games held three years ago, he ranked 41st (2 gold medals, 10 silver medals, 12 bronze medals).
Ahead of this competition, the sports association dispatched power analysts, researchers, and physical therapists to expand medical support. In addition, it was the first to run a pre-camp for local adaptation and conditioning in the Creteille area outside southeastern Paris. The team has also set up a meal support team to provide Korean food once a day.
Table tennis, which has the largest number of 17 players, expects a performance of more than the Tokyo Games (1 gold, 6 silver, 6 bronze). Ju Young-dae (Class1, Gyeongsangnam-do Sports Council for the Disabled) and Seo Soo-yeon (Class2, Gwangju Metropolitan City Hall) in the women's singles are considered the favorites. Joo Young-dae won two gold medals (men's singles, doubles) and Seo Soo-yeon won three gold medals (women's singles, doubles, and mixed doubles) at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games held last year.
Gold shots are also expected in shooting. At the 2024 Changwon Paralympic Shooting World Cup held in April, he won 10 gold medals to continue his momentum of winning the overall championship. Rifle sign Park Jin-ho (SH1C, Gangneung City Hall) and handgun's Cho Jung-du (SH1C, BDH Paras) are drawing high expectations.
Boccia is trying to win her 10th gold medal in a row. Boccia has won more than one gold medal each time since she first participated in the 1988 Seoul Games. Jung Ho-won (BC3, Gangwon Provincial Sports Council for the Disabled), who will participate in the fifth Paralympic Games, is expected to win a gold medal in the mixed BC3 event paired with Kang Sun-hee (Hanjeon KPS). Joo Jung-hoon (K44, SK Eco Plant), the world's second-ranked taekwondo men's 80kg class, is also a gold medal candidate.
