Mr Parsons, as President of the International Paralympic Association (IPC) you saw the final of your games in Tokyo on Sunday. How were they?
Fantastic, especially in a sporty sense.
What the athletes put on the field was incredible.
Especially when you consider the conditions they have had to train under over the past 18 months.
You showed a lot of creativity and resilience.
The adherence to the Paralympics was criticized by the Japanese media before the games began. There was criticism of you too. How do you deal with that?
Yes, being a representative of an international organization involves that.
If the organization is criticized, you are often caught in the crossfire as a person.
I can understand that: I myself come from a country (Brazil, ed.) That is badly affected by the pandemic.
I can empathize with the frustration and even the anger of various groups very well.
How do you rate the harsh criticism of Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)?
Some of the comments were not fair.
But President Bach has thick skin and was prepared for it, just like me.
There is a contract between the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the IOC. Accordingly, the number of disciplines is limited to 23, about a third less than at the Olympics. Are the Paralympics deliberately kept small?
No no.
If you look closely, we have more athletes than ever before, the Paralympics are growing.
We have an agreement with the IOC to organize both of our games back-to-back.
It also contains a few numbers for limiting athletes and sports so that our events do not grow into infinity and are no longer manageable.
We currently have 22 sports, could grow to 23.
We as the IPC decide on the sports program based on our assumptions about which sport could contribute the most to the values of the IPC.
There are different criteria: organization, distribution, number of active countries, anti-doping structures and the like.
Why 23?
We both, IOC and IPC, decided together that 23 is a good number.
A maximum is also set for the Olympics.
This is also done so that potential applicants know the extent to which they are getting involved even before the actual candidacy.
This is how you can estimate the cost of both games.
Have you attended the Olympics? The new action sports - skating, climbing, surfing, BMX freestyle - received a lot of media attention.
During the first half of the Olympics, I also attended some of these new action sports.
For example, skating and surfing.
They were a success.
What does this mean for the Paralympics? For example, there is also WCMX, Wheelchair Motocross. People rushing to the skate park in wheelchairs.
We have to learn from the success of the new sports at the Olympics.
But that does not mean that there will be para surfing or skating at the Paralympics.
But we're going to change the way we approach new sports for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Please explain this new approach.
Usually we open an application process and the respective international associations apply. But we're turning that around for Los Angeles. We target sports in a targeted manner. New sports must be global sports. They cannot only exist in five, six or ten countries in the world. In this case, a more targeted approach means that we ask ourselves: Can we allow ourselves to integrate one of these new sports even if all the criteria are not met? Then said sport could develop via the Paralympic platform. But we are still at a very early stage in this process.