2024 Paris Paralympics live updates: Zakia Khudadadi wins first refugee team medal (2024)

Women’s shot put gold-medal winner Raoua Tlili, center, of Tunisia, celebrates alongside silver medalist Mayerli Buitrago of Columbia and bronze medalist Ruiz Diaz of Argentina on Friday.

(Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press)

PARIS — Tunisia’s Raoua Tlili won her fifth consecutive gold medal in shot put at her fifth Paralympics on Friday.

Tlili’s throw of 10.40 meters at the Stade de France was good enough to win the F41 class for a third straight Games. Her first two shot put golds, in Beijing and London, were in the F40 class. The difference is in stature.

She is 1.33-meters (4-foot-4) tall and 34 years old, and proud of her latest achievement.

“It’s not easy as a short-stature person that is of my age ... especially if you compete against opponents who are 22, 25 years old,” Tlili said.

“The Algerians, the Tunisians, everyone who lives in Paris, came and got reunited to watch me. (I heard them saying) ‘Raoua, Raoua, gold, gold.’”

Tlili also won discus gold medals in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

First para-athletics gold goes to Brazil

Brazil’s Julio Cesar Agripino dos Santo, right, leads during a men’s 5,000-meter race at the Paris Paralympics on Friday.

(Emilio Morenatti / Associated Press)

The first para-athletics gold of the Paralympics was claimed by Brazil’s Julio Cesar Agripino in the men’s 5,000-meter T11 event for runners with a near-total visual impairment.

In a closely contested race, he broke the world record with a time of 14 minutes, 48.85 seconds, edging Japan’s Kenya Karasawa by three seconds, and fellow Brazilian Yeltsin Jacques, the previous world record-holder.

“Today, it’s my day, my title. It means a lot,” Agripino said.

Cyclist wins France’s second gold

France claimed its second gold medal of the Games with cyclist Alexandre Léauté’s triumph in the men’s C2 3,000-meter individual pursuit.

Léauté, who also won gold in Tokyo, won by two seconds from Ewoud Vromant of Belgium, delighting the home crowd at the vélodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

Brazil starts goalball defense with win

Brazil’s men’s goalball team started its title defense with a 13-8 win over the United States in group play.

Goalball is for the vision impaired, and the three-member teams wear blackout glasses. The goals are nine-meters wide. The crowd must be silent so the players can hear the ball with bells inside.

Leomon Moreno led Brazil with six points. A veteran of four Paralympic Games, Moreno praised the high level of goalball in Brazil. “I’m very glad, because I can keep myself playing with these guys,” he said.

ByAssociated Press

Zakia Khudadadi, of the Paralympic Refugee Team, celebrates her bronze medal in taekwondo during the Paralympics Thursday in Paris.

(Madeleine Mertens / Associated Press)

PARIS — Zakia Khudadadi made history on Thursday at the Paris Paralympics by becoming the first athlete from the Refugee Paralympic Team to win a medal.

Khudadadi won bronze in the women’s 47kg category after defeating Turkey’s Ekinci Nurcihan. When the final buzzer sounded at the Grand Palais in central Paris, Khudadadi erupted in joy, throwing her helmet and mouthpiece into the air.

“It was a surreal moment, my heart started racing when I realized I had won the bronze,” Khudadadi said, her voice shaking with emotion. “I went through so much to get here. This medal is for all the women of Afghanistan and all the refugees of the world. I hope that one day there will be peace in my country.”

Khudadadi, who was born without one forearm, began practicing taekwondo in secret at age 11 in a hidden gym in her hometown of Herat, in western Afghanistan.

Originally blocked from competing following the rise of the Taliban in 2021, she was later evacuated from Afghanistan and was allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics for her country following a plea from the international community.

After the competition, she settled in Paris and was later offered the opportunity to compete with the refugee team at the Paris 2024 Paralympics.

“This medal means everything to me, I will never forget that day,” Khudadadi sadi. “I won because of the great support I got from the crowd.”

The atmosphere in the Grand Palais was electric as the French crowd cheered her on as if she were one of their own. Since fleeing Afghanistan, Khudadadi has been training at INSEP, France’s national institute of sport, in Paris with her French coach Haby Niare, a former taekwondo world champion.

“Zakia has been magical. I don’t know how else to put it,” Niare said, beaming with pride. “The training process has been challenging. She faced a lot of injuries and she had to learn a lot in a couple of years but she never lost sight of her goal.”

Khudadadi received her medal from U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and Andrew Parsons, the president of the International Paralympic Committee.

“For the Refugee Paralympic Team, it’s super special, it’s super important,” Parsons said. “Zakia just showed to the world how good she is. It’s an incredible journey, it’s something that we should all learn about.”

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ByDavid Wharton

U.S. swimmer Christie Raleigh-Crossley won silver in a women’s 50-meter freestyle at the Paris Paralympic Games on Thursday.

(Ian MacNicol / Getty Images)

“Horrific” is not a word you normally hear from an athlete who has just medaled in a big-time race.

“I’m going to be full-on honest,” Christie Raleigh Crossley said. “Today was absolutely horrific.”

The U.S. swimmer expressed dismay shortly after winning silver in the 50-meter freestyle at the 2024 Paralympic Games. She was responding to criticism over the category in which she competes.

Raleigh Crossley described what she called “ongoing harassment that I’ve been enduring for the past two years, since I entered para swimming.”

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Competitors dive into the Seine River during the Olympic men’s 10-kilometer race on Aug. 9.

(David Goldman / Associated Press)

PARIS — Concerns over water quality in the Seine River resurfaced at the Paralympic Games on Thursday when organizers changed the schedule for para triathlon races.

All 11 medal events are to be held on one day, Sept. 1, instead of two as originally planned, Paris 2024 organizers said in a statement.

“The decision to hold all medal events on one day was taken in view of the weather forecast and to provide athletes and coaches with as much certainty as possible. The course of the swim remains unchanged,” organizers said.

Water quality in the Seine River was also a major issue at the Olympics. Bacteria levels in the long-polluted Paris waterway fluctuate constantly depending on weather. Heavy rains cause wastewater and runoff to flow into the river, causing bacteria levels to rise.

The organizers said the river’s water quality and flow will continue to be monitored each day and that decisions on preparatory swims for para triathletes to train over the next couple of days, and on the morning of Sept. 1, will be made before each event.

Organizers said events can be pushed back to Sept. 2 and 3 “if needed.”

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ByDavid Wharton

American Sarah Adam blocks Canada’s Zachary Madel during the 2024 Paralympics wheelchair rugby match Thursday in Paris.

(Michel Euler / Associated Press)

It did not take long for Sarah Adam to make history on the first full day of competition at the 2024 Paralympic Games.

Simply by taking her place in the starting lineup for the U.S. wheelchair rugby team, she became the first American woman to play at the highest level of a sport so violent it is referred to as “murderball.”

Only two minutes into the opener against Canada, she took a pass and raced downcourt, scoring the first of her six points in a 51-48 victory.

“It’s always been important to me that I’m going to be a contributor to this team and be seen as any other athlete,” she said. “I think I was able to prove that today.”

Though wheelchair rugby has always been a mixed-gender event at the Paralympics, it has always been male-dominated. Three years ago in Tokyo, only four of 96 players were women. This time, the number is eight.

The sport blends rugby with elements of basketball and team handball. Teams of four dribble and pass a modified volleyball, fighting for territory on a basketball-sized court, pushing their way toward goals at either end.

A 40-second shot clock encourages end-to-end action and full-contact rules allow players to ram each other or use their chairs to form screens that teammates can wheel around. Concussions and broken bones are part of the game.

Americans Clayton Brackets, left, and Sarah Adam acknowledge applause after they defeated Canada 51-48 during the 2024 Paralympics wheelchair rugby match at the Champs Mars Arena Thursday in Paris.

(Michel Euler / Associated Press)

“It’s not just about smashing into each other,” Canadian player Zachary Madell said. “There’s obviously some strategy and finesse required.”

Still, he added, physicality is “a huge part of the sport and what keeps the viewers coming back.”

The 33-year-old Adam discovered wheelchair rugby while studying to become an occupational therapist. Smaller than many of her teammates and opponents, she focused on the cerebral role of ballhandler.

“I have to be smart and see what’s going to happen three plays ahead of time,” she told the Olympic News Service. “It’s a chess match to outsmart your opponent out there.”

Earning a spot on the national team in 2022, Adam helped the U.S. to gold at the 2023 Parapan American Games, a victory that qualified her team for the Paralympics.

The Americans — favored to medal in Paris — began preliminary round play against rival Canada in a game that remained close until the end.

“I liked our composure in the second half,” said Chuck Aoki, who scored a team-leading 21 tries. “Through the second quarter, third quarter, it got away from us a little bit but we settled down, trusted our process and ended up with a healthy enough margin.”

The final score was only part of the equation for Adam.

Being on the court, holding her own against male opponents, pushing across the goal line time after time, she could see the bigger picture.

“It’s just a really exciting time for women in sports, getting the attention I think we’ve always deserved,” she said. “And, for other females to see that, if this is where you want to play, go do it.”

ByThuc Nhi Nguyen

Ezra Frech competes in men’s long jump at the U.S. Paralympic team trials in July. L.A. native and Paralympian is on a mission to change minds.

(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

Ezra Frech made history, extended his arms wide and flashed a knowing smirk to the cheering crowd. On an NBC interview after he soared to a world-record 1.97-meter high jump at the U.S. Paralympic trials, the budding superstar nonchalantly called it “all a part of the plan.”

And this plan is only getting started.

Frech won’t settle for just winning his first Paralympic medals while breaking the limits on disability. The favorite for the high jump title in Paris, who also competes in long jump and the 100 meters, is headed next to USC, where he was the first above-the-knee amputee to commit to a Division I track program. He also struts on fashion runways with his prosthetic left leg, graces billboards in a running blade and shares everything on his social media channels that have more than half a million followers.

“I feel I have the beautiful burden to share my story and inspire the next generation because this community means the world to me,” said Frech, 19. “What I literally believe I was put on this planet to do is to normalize disability.”

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ByAssociated Press

The Netherlands’ Caroline Groot reacts as she wins the gold medal in the Women’s C4-5 500m time trial final Thursday.

(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)

PARIS — Track cyclist Caroline Groot of the Netherlands won the first gold medal of the Paralympic Games on Thursday.

Groot won the final of the C4 and C5 classifications in the 500-meter time trial in women’s track cycling. It was the first medal event of the Games that opened with a spectacular ceremony on Wednesday.

Groot went last after watching C4 world record holder Kadeena Cox crash on her attempt. The British cyclist was denied the opportunity of restarting because a mechanical error was not to blame for her fall.

Groot won in 35.390 seconds, a world record in C5. French cyclist Marie Patouillet (C5) took the silver, and Canada’s Kate O’Brien (C4) took bronze.

C1 to C5 are para cycling classifications for athletes with physical impairments that affect their legs, arms and/or trunk causing issues with functionality who can use a standard bicycle.

C4 is for cyclists with lower limb impairments or issues with lower limb functionality caused by the likes of cerebral palsy, amputations and other lower limb impairments, while C5 is for cyclists with less severe impairments.

Athletes Charles-Antoine Kouakou, Nantenin Keita, Fabien Lamirault, Alexis Hanquinquant and Elodie Lorandi look up after lighting up the Paralympic flame cauldron during the opening ceremony on Wednesday.

(Christophe Ena / Associated Press)

PARIS — Just weeks after hosting the Olympics, Paris inaugurated the 2024 Paralympics on Wednesday with a nearly four-hour-long opening ceremony in the heart of the city.

Against the backdrop of a setting sun, thousands of athletes paraded down the famed Champs-Elysées avenue to Place de la Concorde in central Paris where French President Emmanuel Macron officially declared the Paralympic Games open.

About 50,000 people watched the ceremony in stands built around the iconic square, which is the biggest in Paris and is visible from afar because of its ancient Egyptian Obelisk. Accessibility for athletes in wheelchairs was facilitated with strips of asphalt laid along the avenue and placed over the square.

U.S. athletes takes part in the Paris Paralympic opening ceremony Wednesday.

(Aurelien Morissard / Associated Press)

More than 4,000 athletes with physical, visual and intellectual impairments will compete in 22 sports from Thursday until Sept. 8. Organizers say more than 2 million of the 2.8 million tickets have been sold for the various Paralympic events.

The opening ceremony was held outside the confines of a stadium, just like when the Olympics opened in the city on July 26. Fighter planes flew overhead, leaving red-white-and blue vapors in the colors of the French national flag, before the delegations entered the square in alphabetical order.

Some delegations were huge — more than 250 athletes from Brazil — and some were tiny — less than a handful from Barbados and just three from Myanmar.

Ukraine’s delegation got a loud cheer and some of the crowd stood to applaud them.

Athletes from Brazil take part in the Paralympic opening ceremony in Paris on Wednesday.

(Christophe Ena / Associated Press)

Flag bearers Steve Serio and Nicky Nieves led the U.S. team’s delegation. The French arrived last and to roars from the crowd, which then sang along to popular French songs, including “Que Je T’aime” by late rocker Johnny Hallyday.

Throughout the show, directed by Thomas Jolly who also led the Olympic opening ceremony, singers, dancers and musicians with and without disabilities performed on stage together seamlessly, projecting a theme of inclusion and overcoming physical differences. Lucky Love, a French singer who lost his left arm at birth, was joined by performers in wheelchairs. Other acts featured dancers with crutches.

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons said he hoped the Paris Paralympics would start an “inclusion revolution” beyond the field of sport.

“The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will show what persons with disabilities can achieve at the highest level when the barriers to succeed are removed,” he said in a speech. “The fact these opportunities largely exist only in sport in the year 2024 is shocking. It is proof we can and must do more to advance disability inclusion — whether on the field of play, in the classroom, concert hall or in the boardroom.”

As the ceremony concluded, the Paralympic torch was carried into the area by former Olympic wheelchair tennis gold medalist Michaël Jérémiasz, who was surrounded on stage by dozens of torchbearers. Five French Paralympians lit the Olympic cauldron, which is designed to look like a hot air balloon and glowed gold-like in the night.

German Paralympic athlete Markus Rehm carries the torch during the opening ceremony Wednesday in Paris.

(Thibault Camus / Associated Press)

The Paralympic flag was raised high into the night sky and its emblem adorned the top of the Arc de Triomphe about 3 kilometers (2 miles) away.

Although Wednesday night’s show started at 8 p.m. local time, fans had gathered hours earlier under a scorching sun to get top spots along the way. As performers entertained the crowd on stage, volunteers danced alongside Paralympians as they waved their national flags and the sky gave off a postcard-perfect orange glow.

Tony Estanguet, the president of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, called Paralympians “immense champions who we have the honor of being with tonight.”

The first medals handed out on Thursday will be in taekwondo, table tennis, swimming and track cycling. Athletes are grouped by impairment levels to ensure as level a playing field as possible.

The closing ceremony will be held at Stade de France, the national stadium.

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ByDavid Wharton

McClain Hermes knows precisely what it takes to swim, as fast as possible, to the far end of a 50-meter pool. Keeping count is vital because she is blind.

“I have broken several bones running into the wall,” she says. “I’ve broken my fingers multiple times and broken my nose multiple times. I’ve gotten several concussions.”

Some of the athletes at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris will wear prosthetics, others will be in wheelchairs. Those who are visually impaired will face a different sort of challenge.

Swimmers will charge toward an unseen wall. Long jumpers will sprint down a narrow runway, aiming for the sound of a voice or clapping. Soccer players will continually yell “Voy” — I’m coming — so they don’t smack into each other.

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Britain’s Amy Conroy (10) and China’s Lin Suiling (9) battle for the ball during a wheelchair basketball quarterfinal game at the Tokyo Paralympics.

(Kiichiro Sato / Associated Press)

PARIS — Let the games begin again.

The Paralympic Games are set to open Wednesday as some 4,400 athletes with disabilities, permanent injuries or impairments prepare to compete for 549 medals across 22 sports over 11 days in Paris.

The French capital, which just hosted the Olympics, again provides the backdrop for what promises to be another spectacle, with many of the same venues hosting Paralympic competitions.

Historic square Place de la Concorde, which hosted skateboarding, breaking and 3x3 basketball during the Olympics, will host the opening ceremony.

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U.S. paracylist Oksana Masters celebrates after winning gold at the Tokyo Paralympics.

(Emilio Morenatti / Associated Press)

PARIS — Being the follow-up act to the Paris Olympics is no easy task, but the Paralympic Games that begin Wednesday promise to offer up their own fair share of memorable sporting moments.

This is an event that highlights the human ability to overcome hardships and disabilities, so the word “insurmountable” isn’t one you’re likely to hear in Paris over the next two weeks as around 4,400 athletes with a wide range of life-impacting impairments compete for medals in 549 events across 22 sports.

Here’s a look at some of the other events that athletes will be competing in at the Paralympics and how competitors are categorized based on their disability or impairment.

Which sports are in the Paralympics?

Of the 22 Paralympic sports, only two do not have an Olympic equivalent — goalball and boccia.

Goalball is played on an indoor court the size of a volleyball court with goals set up at each end. Teams of visually impaired or blind players (wearing eyeshades to ensure fairness) take turns rolling a ball containing bells toward the opposing goal while the defending team’s players act as goalkeepers.

In boccia, players throw or roll leather balls as close as they can to a small ball called a jack.

Who can qualify to compete at the Paralympics?

To compete at the Paralympics, athletes must have “an underlying health condition that leads to a permanent eligible impairment,” the International Paralympic Committee says.

Impairments can be caused by the likes of cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, amputations, physical injuries or an intellectual impairment, blindness or reduced sight.

How are athletes classified?

To ensure fair competition between Paralympians, athletes are grouped by how limited they are by their impairment — in other words, how much of an effect it has on their ability to compete in their chosen sport.

The classifications aim to ensure that every competitor has a fair chance to win and that “sporting excellence determines which athlete or team is ultimately victorious,” the International Paralympic Committee says.

Assessment and sports classes

All Paralympians undergo an assessment by a panel of experts to determine which sports class they should compete in based on the degree and nature of their impairment. Each sport has its own criteria for how to assess the eligibility of competitors. Some, like para powerlifting, only have one sports class. Para athletics, which is open to athletes with any impairment, has more than 50 sports classes.

The classification system focuses on grouping together athletes with similar functional abilities rather than similar disabilities, so athletes with different impairments can compete against each other if they are allocated to the same sports class.

ByAustin Knoblauch

(Aurelien Morissard / Associated Press)

The 2024 Paris Paralympics are set to begin Wednesday, with the opening ceremony scheduled for 11 a.m. PDT. The first events for the Games will begin late Wednesday night PDT (Thursday morning in Paris).

Here’s everything you need to know to watch the Paralympics:

Opening ceremony: NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Paris Paralympics opening ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. PDT Wednesday on USA Network, an hour before the scheduled start.

How to watch the events: USA Network and CNBC will provide at least nine hours of coverage every day from Aug. 29-Sept. 8. Every event will be streamed live on Peaco*ck and on NBCParalympics.com and the NBC Sports app (iOS, Android).

NBC will also have coverage at select times throughout the Games.

For a full rundown of the TV and streaming schedule, check out the NBC Olympics site.