The 2024 Paralympic Games

“I will not be participating at the Paralympics. I will be competing.”

-Hunter Woodhall, Paralympic Gold Medalist in the Men’s 400M T62 Category

The 2024 Paris Olympics were a highlight of this past summer, with 30.6 million viewers tuning in across all NBC platforms, making it the most-streamed Olympics. Among many other highlights, Noah Lyles (USA) and Letsile Tebogo (Botswana) battled it out for the title of World’s Fastest Man, Katie Ledecky’s (USA) swimming prowess made her the most-decorated female American Olympian across all sports, Yusuf Dikeҫ (Turkey) stunned viewers with his nonchalant silver medal shot, and Cindy Ngamba won the Refugee Olympic Team their first ever medal with a bronze in Women’s Middleweight Boxing. My favorite event this year, by far, was the men’s 1500M. Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse (USA) pulled off a huge upset and absolutely smoked Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen! Watch it here.

With all the excitement surrounding the Olympics this year, people were understandably disappointed when the Closing Ceremony wrapped up. A common sentiment I heard was, “Well, what do I do now?” I wanted to yell from the rooftops, “It’s not over yet!”

My friends, I present the 2024 Paralympic Games. The Paralympics kicked off a couple of weeks after the Olympics ended and were an absolute treat to watch. From Blind Soccer to Sitting Volleyball, and including most of the events featured at the Paris Olympics, the Paralympics showcased athletes with a wide range of physical disabilities, as well as visual and intellectual impairments. Each athlete was put into a category within their sport based on the severity of their impairment and generally competed with others in their same category. Learn more about the classifications here. I am a track and field buff, so that is what I spent most of my time watching. It was interesting to learn that there were several iterations of the same event. For example, there were 16 different men’s 100M finals and each one was for athletes of different classifications.

Much of the time, people view Paralympians as “participants” in their events, rather than competitors, and use people with disabilities as inspirational models for able-bodied people on the basis of their life circumstances (a/k/a “inspiration porn”). The Paralympics are just as challenging, competitive, and fun to watch as the Olympics. I encourage you to learn more about para-athletics and watch the 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles!