Who and What to Watch For at the 2024 Paralympic Games

Good news for everyone still buzzing from an action-packed, awe-inspiring Olympic Games in Paris: The two-week wait before the next round of top-level competition is almost over.

The Paralympic Games—parallel to the Olympics, and the biggest sporting event in the world for people with disabilities—begin with opening ceremonies down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the famous Place de la Concorde on August 28. From that day through September 8, more than 4,000 athletes from around the world will compete in 549 medal events across 22 sports. Some—such as para-triathlon and wheelchair fencing—have analogs in Olympic sports. Others are unique to the Paralympics, including boccia, a precision ball game, and goalball, a fast-paced sport played by those with visual impairments.

Like the Olympics, each Paralympic competition brings its own breakout stars and surprises. But here are the athletes and storylines we’re most looking forward to as it all rolls out.

1. The women’s sitting volleyball team and men’s wheelchair basketball team are going for three-peats.

Team USA is looking for back-to-back-to-back golds in Paris: The US women’s sitting volleyball team has medaled at every Paralympics since the sport was introduced in 2004. That includes gold medals in Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021.

Led by veterans like Lora Webster (who’s been on every one of those teams) as well as young stars like MaKenzie Franklin (who was named to the national team in 2023), the team will go for a third gold medal in Paris. Watch them try to extend their streak during their competition from August 30 to September 7.

Meanwhile, the men’s wheelchair basketball team—led by star player and five-time Paralympian Steve Serio, in his last Games before retirement—will also go for a third consecutive gold. You can watch them beginning on August 29; the gold and bronze medal matches are on September 7.

2. Paralympic parents will keep the momentum rolling.

Speaking of Webster, she’s a mom of four, and twice competed while pregnant. While she kept that fact hidden in London in 2012, she was open about her pregnancy in Tokyo—a sign of her own confidence as an advocate, but also how far the sport has come. “It was obvious that there had been a shift as far as accepting what a woman’s body can do and what it is capable of while simultaneously creating life,” she told SELF in the spring.

She’s far from the only parent who will be competing in Paris. A total of 45—including 14 mothers and 31 fathers—are part of Team USA’s 225-member roster, according to the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

Swimmer Mallory Weggemann will be bringing her 17-month-old daughter, Charlotte, as she competes in her fourth Games. And two-time Paralympian Femita Akenbayu will be back on the track just eight months after giving birth to her daughter, Nailah. “I told everybody you can do both, and I did it, and I’m just so proud,” she said to Team USA immediately after running 13.01 seconds to win the 100 meters at the US Paralympic Team Trials for Track & Field in July.

Just like at the Olympics, Paralympic families can spend time with their little ones in the first-ever nursery in the Village. Allyson Felix—one of Akenbayu’s role models for her return—helped make it happen.

3. American track and field prodigy Ezra Frech has his eyes on gold—and is making history off the track, too.

He’s only 19, but Ezra Frech is already an experienced international competitor—he made the Tokyo Games at age 15, and placed fifth in the T63 high jump, a category for those with limb differences who use prosthetics. Finishing so close but yet so far from the podium lit a fire, he’s said. In 2023, he won gold (and set a world record) at the World Championships, followed by a silver in 2024.

This year, he’ll contend for Paralympic hardware in three events: The long jump (August 31), high jump (September 3), and the 100 meters (prelims are September 1 and finals, September 2). He also has plenty to look forward to afterward: He’s committed to the University of Southern California, becoming the first above-the-knee amputee to join a Division I college track and field program.

4. Jessica Long makes mental health a priority while looking to add to her legacy at her sixth Paralympics.

Speaking of prodigies, swimmer Jessica Long was just 12 years old (!!) when she debuted at the 2004 Paralympics in Athens and won three gold medals. Now, 20 years and 26 more medals (13 of them gold) later, she’s back for an astonishing sixth Games. She’ll compete in Paris in the 400-meter freestyle, 100-meter backstroke, 100-meter butterfly, and 200-meter individual medley in the S8 classification, for swimmers who lack full muscle power, often because they’re missing limbs.

The journey hasn’t always been easy, and Long has spoken openly about taking care of her mental health, including beginning antidepressants after the Tokyo Paralympics and working with her therapist regularly. “I think there’s a stigma around taking antidepressants. especially as athletes, because we’re told, you know, to push through,” she told SELF. After Tokyo, though, she realized she couldn’t do it all on her own, and enlisted help: “I think there’s so much power in being vulnerable. My whole life, I’ve had to be so vulnerable, with being an amputee or being an athlete. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable with my mental health.”

She’s also been focused on building awareness for para-sport, including writing a children’s book and appearing in a Super Bowl commercial. All this while continuing to train hard, too: In 2020, she moved from Baltimore back to the US Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for the first time since 2014. “I do want to be a legend,” she said recently on the Unfiltered Waters Podcast. “I don’t want to just be good. I don’t want to be great. I want to be the best.”

5. Also in the pool, record-breakers Anastasia Pagonis and Gia Pergolini aim to defend their titles.

In two of the most stunning debuts of the Tokyo Games, 17-year-olds Anastasia Pagonis and Gia Pergolini both broke world records in their events—Pagonis in the 400-meter freestyle S11 and Pergolini, who now swims for Florida International University, in the women’s 100-meter backstroke S13 (collectively, two of three classifications for vision impairment).

Both will be back in Paris striving to repeat their victories. You can watch all the para-swimming action August 29 through September 7.

6. Tatyana McFadden has a chance at track and field history.

Another six-time Paralympian, legendary wheelchair racer Tatyana McFadden already has 20 Paralympic medals to her name. If she earns another gold in any of the five events she’s competing in—from the 100 meters to the marathon—she’ll become the most winning American, male or female, in para track and field history.

All the para athletics events—or track and field, for us Americans—take place August 30 to September 7 at the Stade de France (the same purple track we saw at the Olympics). The one exception: the marathon, which will be held September 8 and traverse the city, beginning at La Courneuve, in Georges-Valbon park, and ending at the Esplanade des Invalides (where the Olympic marathon also finished, though the rest of the route was different).

7. Wheelchair rugby player Sarah Adam will be the first US woman to compete.

Unlike Olympic rugby sevens, wheelchair rugby is a mixed-gender sport, where men and women compete alongside each other on the same four-person team. But Team USA has never had a woman on the roster—until now.

Enter Sarah Adam, who started playing the sport as an able-bodied volunteer while attending occupational therapy school. Before graduating, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was classified into the sport in 2019, meaning she went through an evaluation to determine her level of impairment due to her disability. She made her first national team two years later, and is now headed to her first Paralympic Games.

You can watch all the high-speed crashes and other (full-contact) action in wheelchair rugby—it’s called “murderball” for a reason—August 29 to September 2. USA Wheelchair Rugby is the only team to medal at every Paralympics since the sport was added in 2000, including silver medals in Rio and Tokyo; this year, under former player and now head coach Joe Delagrave, they’ll hope to upgrade to gold.

8. The multi-talented Oksana Masters aims to add to her medal total.

Few athletes can claim the versatility of Oksana Masters—she has 18 total medals between the Winter and Summer Games, in para-Nordic skiing, para-cycling, and para-rowing.

Masters will be in Paris to defend her two gold medals from Tokyo, in both the road time trial H4-5 and road race H5 events, for hand cyclists who have limited movement in their lower body or missing limbs. Para-cycling will take place on August 29 through September 7.

9. A rising star in archery will make her Paralympic debut—alongside one of her mentors.

Sheetal Devi of India is also just 17 and has only been competing in archery since 2021. But in that time, she’s won silver at the World Archery Para Championships and gold in the individual compound and mixed team events at the Asian Para Games. At that competition, she shot six perfect 10s in a row; she has the top world ranking for para compound archers heading into Paris.

Devi was born with phocomelia, a condition that leads to underdeveloped limbs. Coaches at a youth event sponsored by the Indian Army recognized her athletic talent and at first attempted to help her participate with prosthetics. That didn’t work, but soon, they learned about armless American archer Matt Stutzman, who uses his legs to shoot and won silver at the London Paralympics in 2012. They helped Devi use a similar technique, and soon, she was firing her way into the highest levels of competition.

Stutzman, who has helped coach Devi personally, will also be competing in Paris. He’s 41, has had hip injuries, and has said this might be his final Paralympic appearance, though he hasn’t ruled out trying to qualify for Los Angeles in 2028.

10. Two Survivor contestants will return to the screen.

You might recognize Ryan Medrano and Noelle Lambert from Survivor 43 in the fall of 2022. While both were voted out—Medrano in ninth and Lambert in eighth—they both qualified for the Paralympic track & field team this summer.

Lambert, a former collegiate lacrosse player who lost her leg in a moped accident in 2016, competed in Tokyo in the 100 meters in the T63 classification, where she placed sixth. She decided to try long jumping earlier this year and quickly excelled, setting a new Americas record of 4.75 meters at the US Paralympics Track & Field National Championships in March, then shattering that mark again with a 5.06-meter jump at Trials in July to earn her spot in Paris.

Medrano, who has mild cerebral palsy, will compete at his first Games in the men’s 100-meter T38, a classification for athletes with impairments in movement coordination.

11. Hunter Woodhall gets his moment to go for gold.

Just a couple of weeks ago during the Olympics, Hunter Woodhall was on the sidelines supporting his wife, Tara Davis-Woodhall, as she won Olympic gold in the long jump (which was captured in perhaps one of the most heartwarming photos from the Games). Now, they’ll swap places. Woodhall competes in the men’s 100 meters in the T64 category beginning on September 1 and the men’s 400 meters in the T62 category on September 6.

Both categories are for people with lower limb differences competing with prosthetics. Woodhall was born with fibular hemimelia, a condition that stops lower limbs from developing properly, and had both his legs amputated as a child. This is his third Games; he won bronze in the T62 400 meters in Tokyo and in Rio in 2016, picked up a silver in the T44 200 meters and the T44 400 meters.

12. And for the first time, you’ll be able to watch every single event.

Definitely don’t cancel your Peacock subscription yet—there, you’ll find more than 1,500 hours of live coverage that includes all 22 Paralympic sports. Plus, you can watch more than 140 hours of daily coverage across NBC, USA Network, and CNBC.

NBC proper will present nine hours of coverage, including six hours in primetime. And two popular features of Olympic coverage—Gold Zone, which flips between sports to catch must-watch moments, and Multiview, where you can watch multiple events at once—will both be back for the Paralympics, too.

Commentators like longtime sportscaster Andrea Joyce and 2016 Paralympian Lacey Henderson will be on the ground in Paris to report from USOPC’s Team USA House and other locations around the city (it’s actually the first time that NBC commentators will host in-person at the Paralympics).

Related:

• If You’re Not Following the Perfectly Unserious Paralympics TikTok Account, You’re Missing Out
• The Best Thing About the Olympic Village Is the Free Preventive Health Care
• Paris 2024 Was Supposed to Be ‘Normal’—But You Can’t Compete With COVID

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