As greater than 4,400 athletes collect in Paris for the 2024 Paralympic Games, the first medals are beginning to be awarded. The Games kicked off on Aug. 28, and can run through Sept. 8.
The first medal of the Games went to Netherlands para bike owner Caroline Groot, who set each a world file and a Paralympic file in the 500m time trial C4-5. Italy’s Francesco Bocciardo additionally set a Paralympic file, as the 30-year-old para swimmer introduced residence a medal in the males’s 200m freestyle S5 in his fourth Games. And host nation France acquired its first gold of the Games courtesy of para swimmer Ugo Didier in the males’s 400m freestyle S9.
The first U.S. medal of the Paralympics was a silver earned by para swimmer Elizabeth Marks in the ladies’s 50m freestyle S6; she additionally collected silver medals in the ladies’s 50m butterfly S6 and 200m particular person medley SM6.
At the Games, there can be medals awarded in 549 occasions throughout 22 sports activities in 20 venues — together with the aquatics middle at La Defense, which simply noticed medal-winning performances from Olympians corresponding to U.S. star Katie Ledecky and France’s Leon Marchand, and the athletics services at the Stade de France, the place U.S. lengthy jumper Tara Woodhall-Davis introduced residence a gold.
She was cheered on by her husband, Hunter Woodhall, a sprinter who will chase his personal gold at the Paralympics beginning Sept. 1. She leaped into his arms after her closing bounce in considered one of the Games’ most viral moments.
