Paralympic Games 2021: let the party begin anyway!
Germany's Markus Rehm, during the long jump competition, August 25, 2019 in Tokyo, as a rehearsal before the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
Kazuhiro NOGI AFP / Archives
Text by: Farid Achache Follow
4 min
Despite the strengthened health rules in the face of the record wave of infections in Japan, the athletes participating in the Tokyo Paralympic Games will take to the track Wednesday, August 25, the day after the opening ceremony.
The 4,400 participants will try to share the 539 titles in play.
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From our special correspondent in Tokyo
The city of Tokyo will come back into the limelight during the Paralympic Games.
If for this new edition the number of participants is a record according to the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), the delegations, on the other hand, are down compared to the maximum reached in London (164) in 2012.
In the land of the Rising Sun, they will be less than 160. Several countries of the Pacific Islands which could not afford two weeks of
quarantine
in Australia on the way to and from Japan will not be present in the Japanese capital.
A hoped-for television audience
Created in 1960, the Paralympic Games have now reached their cruising speed and the meeting is unmissable.
In 1964, only 378 athletes had competed in Tokyo, which this year became the first city to host the Paralympic Games for a second time.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games have been held in the same city since the Seoul Games in 1988.
From athletics to sitting volleyball, medals are up for grabs in 22 sports, including two new this year, taekwondo and badminton.
Athletes will discover the range of Paralympic venues which include, among others, the Olympic Stadium in central Tokyo for athletics, the historic Nippon Budokan for judo, or the brand new Tokyo Aquatic Center for swimming.
“
We think we'll reach over four billion people,
” says IPC President
Andrew Parsons
, hoping for a huge TV audience.
In the absence of spectators due to the almost generalized closed session decreed in the face of the health situation.
According to the IPC, a record 4.1 billion cumulative viewers watched the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.
This year, free-to-air coverage in
49 territories of sub-
Saharan
Africa
, aims to increase the global audience and fight against the stigma of disability.
"Blade Jumper" to beat records
Several stars will go in search of the Grail.
Like the German Markus Rehm.
Known as the “Blade Jumper”, the long jumper is the world record holder in his category (T64) with a jump to 8.62 meters at the last European Championships in June.
The 33-year-old three-time Paralympic champion plans to improve him at the Tokyo National Stadium.
In this case, he would achieve a better jump than the reigning Olympic champion, the Greek Miltiadis Tedoglou (8.41 meters).
Bebe Vio, a sport icon in her native Italy, is the first competitive fencer without arms or legs.
She won a gold and a bronze medal at the Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016. She will try to do it again to the delight of the million fans who follow her on her Instagram account.
At home, the Japanese Shingo Kunieda, one of the most successful wheelchair tennis players with 45 Grand Slam tournaments to his name (in singles and doubles) has every intention of shining.
Suffered from a spinal cord tumor at the age of nine, he won three gold and two bronze medals at the Paralympic Games.
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Paralympic Games 2021