Gymnastics, boxing, and water polo are just some of the Olympic sports activities that do not characteristic within the Paralympics.
However have been you conscious there are additionally Paralympic disciplines that do not have Olympic equivalents?
This is what you must know in regards to the sports activities which are distinctive to , and the Australians competing in them.
Boccia
The Confédération Mondiale des Sports activities de Boules (CMSB), the governing physique for boules sports activities, has made a number of makes an attempt because the Eighties to get the game added to the Olympics.
However not even France’s ardour for pétanque — one type of boules — might persuade the Worldwide Olympic Committee to incorporate it within the Paris 2024 Video games.
Boccia, one other kind of boules, nevertheless, has been a characteristic of the Paralympics since 1984.
It was initially developed for individuals with cerebral palsy, however can now be performed at knowledgeable stage by these with any incapacity that impacts their motor perform.
Australia’s Daniel Michel gained a bronze medal in boccia on the Tokyo Paralympics. Supply: Getty / Koki Nagahama
Boccia is performed in wheelchairs on an indoor court docket and includes rivals throwing, kicking or utilizing a ramp system to get their six balls as shut as attainable to a small white ball — or ‘jack’.
Particular person and pair matches have 4 rounds or ‘ends’, whereas these performed in groups of three have six.
Till this 12 months, Australia had solely ever gained two Paralympic medals in boccia — with bronzes in 1996 in Atlanta and 2021 in Tokyo.
That file has improved at this 12 months’s Paris Paralympic Video games, with Daniel Michel and Jamieson Leeson each successful silver of their respective males’s and girls’s BC3 occasions. Leeson has made historical past as the primary Australian lady to win a boccia medal within the Paralympics.
Michel and Leeson will even be competing collectively within the BC3 pairs, and, as world No. 1s, are the new favourites to win.
Becoming a member of Michel and Leeson in Paris are their respective ramp operators, Ashlee Maddern and Jasmine Haydon.
Australian boccia gamers Daniel Michel (left) and Jamieson Leeson (proper) have a powerful likelihood of successful gold medals in Paris. Supply: AAP / Bianca de Marchi
Goalball
Initially invented in 1946 for veterans who misplaced their sight throughout World Battle Two, goalball is an indoor workforce sport performed by athletes who’re blind or have low imaginative and prescient.
Two groups of three compete on a volleyball-sized court docket, taking turns to roll a ball right into a nine-metre purpose whereas opposing gamers attempt to cease it with their our bodies.
For a shot to depend, the ball should bounce within the thrower’s touchdown space not less than as soon as.
Australia’s ladies’s goalball workforce competed on the Tokyo Paralympics however did not qualify for Paris. Supply: Getty / Alex Pantling
All gamers put on blackout eye masks to make sure truthful competitors, and the ball has bells inside to assist them decide the place it’s.
Every match is split into two 12-minute halves, throughout which spectators aren’t allowed to make any noise so gamers can hear the ball’s actions.
Goalball made its Paralympic debut in Toronto in 1976 with the lads’s competitors earlier than the ladies’s occasion was added on the 1984 Video games in New York.
With three gold, six silver, and three bronze medals, the USA is probably the most embellished nation within the sport.
Australia has by no means gained a Paralympic medal for goalball and does not have a males’s or ladies’s workforce competing in Paris.
The final time an Australian males’s workforce certified was in 2000 in Sydney, whereas our ladies final took half in Tokyo.
