2020 Summer Paralympics

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Games of the XXXII Olympiad
150px
Host city Tokyo, Japan
Motto 'United by Emotion[lower-alpha 1]
Events 539 in 22 sports
Opening ceremony 24 July
Closing ceremony 9 August
Stadium Japan National Stadium

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The 2020 Summer Paralympics (Japanese: 2020年夏季パラリンピック会 Hepburn: 2020-Nen Kaki Pararinpikku?), branded as Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, are a major international multi-sport parasports event governed by the International Paralympic Committee. Scheduled as the 16th Summer Paralympic Games, they are currently ongoing in Tokyo, Japan between 24 August and 5 September 2021.[2]

Originally scheduled to take place between 25 August and 6 September 2020, both the Olympics and Paralympics were postponed to 2021 in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is held largely behind closed doors with no public spectators permitted due to a state of emergency in the Tokyo region. The events are still being branded as Tokyo 2020 for marketing purposes.[3] These mark the second Summer Paralympics to be hosted by Tokyo since the 1964 Games, and the third Paralympics held in Japan overall since the 1998 Winter Paralympics. Tokyo is the first city to host the Paralympics twice.

These Games will see the introduction of badminton and taekwondo to the Paralympic programme, replacing sailing and 7-a-side football.

Bids

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Main article: Bids for the 2020 Summer Olympics

As part of an agreement between the International Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee first established in 2001, the host of the 2020 Summer Olympics would also host the 2020 Summer Paralympics.[4] After the second round of voting, which followed a tie-breaker, the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics were awarded to Tokyo at the 125th IOC Session.

2020 Summer Olympics host city election[5]
City NOC name Round 1 Runoff Round 2
Tokyo  Japan 42 — 60
Istanbul  Turkey 26 49 36
Madrid  Spain 26 45 —

Preparations

Transport

Ahead of the 2016 Summer Paralympics closing ceremony, Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike advocated for the city to improve its accessibility as a legacy project for the Games. She cited narrow roadways with no sidewalks, and buildings constructed with narrow doorways and low ceilings, as challenges that needed to be overcome. In particular, she called for a transition to underground power lines to facilitate the widening of roads.[6][7][8]

Volunteers

In September 2018, applications to be volunteers at the Olympic and Paralympic Games were released. By January 2019 186,101 applications had been received. Interviews to whittle the numbers down began in February 2019 and training taking place in October 2019.[9] The volunteers at the venues will be known as "Field Cast" and the volunteers in the city will be known as "City Cast." These names were chosen from a shortlist of four out of an original 149 pairs of names. The other shortlisted names were "Shining Blue and Shining Blue Tokyo", "Games Anchor and City Anchor" and "Games Force and City Force." The names were chosen by the people who had applied to be volunteers at the games.[10]

Medals

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Main article: 2020 Summer Olympics § Medals

The designs of the medals for the 2020 Summer Paralympics were unveiled on 25 August 2019;[11] as with the Olympic medals, they are constructed using recycled metals that were obtained through an electronics recycling programme.[12] The medals feature a design inspired by traditional folding hand fans to symbolise the shared experience of the Paralympics; alternating sectors containing textured areas visually and tactually depict rocks, flowers, wood, leaves, and water to symbolise the geology of Japan. The pivot where the fan meets is stated to symbolise the unity of Paralympic athletes. The obverse of the medal contains an untextured version of the fan pattern, the Paralympic emblem, and inscriptions in braille. To aid those with visual impairments, the edges and ribbons of the medals contain one, two, or three circular indentations and silicone convex dots for gold, silver, and bronze medals respectively so that they can be easily identified by touch.[13][14]

COVID-19 impact

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Main articles: 2020 Summer Olympics § Biosecurity protocols, and COVID-19 cases at the 2020 Summer Olympics and 2020 Summer Paralympics

The 2020 Summer Olympics were largely held behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan and a state of emergency in Tokyo issued by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, though events in some regions could be held with up to 10,000 spectators or 50% capacity (whichever is smaller). The declaration was originally in effect from 12 July through 22 August (two days before the Paralympic opening ceremony); on 2 August, citing worsening rates of infection, Suga announced that the existing state of emergency would be extended through 31 August, and expanded to several other prefectures (including three that neighbour Tokyo).[15]

New daily cases in Tokyo reached over 4,000 by 11 August; it was anticipated that no public spectators would be admitted at venues in Tokyo and other affected regions, as with the Olympics. Organizers discussed other options for some form of spectator presence, such as inviting local school students to attend events (a programme which was also employed during the Olympics, but largely scaled back due to the pandemic).[16][17][18] It was later confirmed that there would be no public spectators at venues in the Tokyo, Chiba, and Saitama prefectures.[19] On 19 August, the state of emergency was extended through 12 September, and expanded to include Shizuoka.[20]

On 20 August, Tokyo Organizing Committee delivery officer Hidemasa Nakamura stated that the biosecurity protocols for the Paralympics had been expanded upon those from the Olympics due to the increased vulnerability to COVID-19 among its athletes, but that Tokyo was facing deteriorating hospital capacity, and that "It’s a fight against time so we need to make sure that sufficient communication is taken at a speedy manner."[21] Paula Tesoriero of the New Zealand delegation stated that the Tokyo Organizing Committee and IPC had "worked tirelessly to create the most safe and secure environment possible with a focus on continuing to stay vigilant."[22]

Torch relay

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Main article: 2020 Summer Paralympics torch relay

The details of the torch relay route were announced on 21 November 2019, there will be a Heritage Flame Celebration that will be held in Stoke Mandeville and flame lighting festivals will take place in 43 of Japan's 47 prefectures between 13 and 17 August 2020. Torch relays will be scheduled from 18 to 21 August throughout four prefectures that will co-host Paralympic events during the run up to the Paralympic Opening Ceremony. The flames from each of the flame lighting festivals hosted in each prefecture will be brought together in Tokyo on 21 August where the Paralympic Flame will be officially lit, the last four days of the torch relay will start in Tokyo. The locations in which the torch relay goes through will be similar to the 2020 Summer Olympics torch relay.[23][24][25][26]

Aluminium taken from temporary housing in Fukushima will be used to make the torches for the Olympic and Paralympic flames. More than 10,000 pieces of aluminium will be used and organisers contacted local authorities to see which houses were no longer being used.[27]

The Games

Sports

539 events in 22 sports will be held during the 2020 Summer Paralympics. Cycling events will be split into road and track disciplines. Team events of goalball, sitting volleyball, and wheelchair basketball continue as men's and women's events, wheelchair rugby continues to be a mixed event, while 5-a-side-football will only be open to male competitors.[28] New events and classifications have also been added or realigned in other sports.[29][30]

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New sports

In January 2014, the IPC began accepting bids for new sports to be added to the Paralympic programme; they included amputee football, badminton, power hockey, powerchair football, and taekwondo. New disciplines were also proposed in existing events, including visually impaired match racing and one-person multi-hull in sailing, and 3x3 basketball in intellectually disabled (ID) and wheelchair classifications.[31][32]

On 31 January 2015, the IPC officially announced that badminton and taekwondo had been added to the Paralympic programme for 2020, which will replace 7-a-side football and sailing (both dropped due to an insufficient international reach).[28]

Participating National Paralympic Committee teams

On 9 December 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all international sport for a period of four years, after the Russian government was found to have tampered with lab data that it provided to WADA in January 2019 as a condition of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency being reinstated. On 26 April 2021 it was confirmed Russian athletes would represent the Russian Paralympic Committee, with the acronym 'RPC'.[33]

On 6 April 2021, North Korea announced that it would not participate in the 2020 Summer Paralympics because of COVID-19 concerns.[34] On 16 August 2021, Afghanistan withdrew from the Games due to violence and instability in the country following the Taliban's capture of Kabul, which left their team of Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli unable to travel to Tokyo. Their national flag however was still paraded at the opening ceremony as a show of solidarity.[35][36][37] On 20 August, the IPC confirmed that Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu had also withdrawn from the Games due to budgetary concerns tied to COVID-19 travel restrictions; absent direct flights to Japan, the countries' athletes would have had to travel to Tokyo via Australia and New Zealand, which enforces a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all travellers.[38]

The following 161 NPCs have qualified at least one athlete. Five of them, Bhutan, Grenada, Maldives, Paraguay and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines will make their debut appearances at the Paralympic Games, while the Solomon Islands will make their second appearance after missing out of the 2016 Summer Paralympics.

Participating National Paralympic Committees
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Number of athletes by National Paralympic Committee

4,535 athletes from 163 NPCs: Ranking listed by number of athletes. As of 20 August 2021

Test events

There were test events before the Olympic and Paralympic Games;[39][40] these were contested from June 2019 to June 2020 before the start of the 2020 Summer Olympics. The selected Paralympic sports were athletics (2–3 May 2020), goalball (28–29 September 2019), paratriathlon (15–18 August 2019), powerlifting (26–27 September 2019), swimming (16 April 2020) and wheelchair rugby (12–15 March 2020). It was announced in February 2019 that test events would be under the banner "Ready, Steady, Tokyo". 22 of the 56 events would be organised by the Tokyo organising committee and the rest by national and international organisations. World Sailing's World Cup Series held at Enoshima was the first test event, with the last one set to be the Tokyo Challenge Track Meet in May 2020.[41]

All test events scheduled after 12 March 2020 were postponed due to COVID-19.

Medal summary

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See also: 2020 Summer Paralympics medal table

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Calendar

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See also: Chronological summary of the 2020 Summer Paralympics

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Venues

The venues for the Paralympic games as detailed on the Tokyo 2020 official website:[42]

Tokyo Bay, where a number of events will be held
Nippon Budokan, host of the Judo event
The International Broadcast and Main Press Centre

Heritage Zone

Tokyo Bay Zone

Venues outside 10 km area

Non-competition venues

Marketing

The emblems of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics were unveiled on 25 April 2016. The Paralympic emblem features a hand fan in a circle form, filled with an indigo-colored checkerboard pattern. The design is meant to "express a refined elegance and sophistication that exemplifies Japan".[44] The designs replaced a previous emblem which had been scrapped due to allegations that it plagiarized the logo of the Théâtre de Liège in Belgium.[45][46]

Mascot

File:Tokyo 2020 mascots.svg
Miraitowa (left), the Olympic mascot, and Someity (right), the Paralympic mascot

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Main article: Miraitowa and Someity

The shortlist of mascots for the Tokyo Games was unveiled on 7 December 2017 and the winning entry was announced on 28 February 2018. Candidate pair A, created by Ryo Taniguchi, received the most votes (109,041) and was declared the winner, defeating Kana Yano's pair B (61,423 votes) and Sanae Akimoto's pair C (35,291 votes). Someity is a figure with pink chequered patterns inspired by the Games' official logo, as well as cherry blossom flowers. It has a calm but powerful ability, it is nature loving, and it speaks to the wind. Both Miraitowa and Someity were named by the Organising Committee on 22 July 2018.[47]

Animated shorts

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Main article: Animation x Paralympic

Japanese public broadcaster NHK produced a series of short films called Animation x Paralympic: Who Is Your Hero? Each short features a different Paralympic sport, and is designed and produced in collaboration with well-known creators of anime and manga, sometimes featuring crossovers with popular series or with real-life athletes.[48][49]

Broadcasting

The International Paralympic Committee anticipated that the 2020 Summer Paralympics would be seen by a global audience of at least 4.25 billion viewers, an increase over the estimated 4.1 billion of the 2016 Games.[50] Japanese broadcaster NHK will air coverage of selected events in 8K.[51][52]

In the United Kingdom, these will be the third Summer Paralympics to be broadcast by Channel 4, which plans to air at least 300 hours of coverage on free-to-air TV (with More4 to be dedicated primarily to team events), 1,200 hours of coverage via streaming, as well as an evening highlights program and The Last Leg nightly. The broadcaster launched a trailer directed by Bradford Young entitled "Super. Human." in mid-July 2021, which aimed to focus on the "realities" of the lives of Paralympic athletes, and "the sacrifices they make in pursuit of greatness".[53][54][55]

In the United States, NBCUniversal announced that for the first time, it will carry three primetime coverage windows for the Paralympics on the free-to-air NBC network, which will "showcase the incredible back stories of the athletes and teams competing in Tokyo". The remainder of event coverage will air on NBCSN and Olympic Channel, totalling 1,200 hours.[56]

Canadian media rights will once again be led by the CBC, with 120 hours of television coverage, along with broadcasts by Sportsnet and AMI-tv.[57]

In Australia, the Seven Network will offer one free-to-air channel broadcast via either their Channel 7 or 7mate channels and up to 16 free streaming channels via the online 7plus service.[58]

In India, Eurosport India and Discovery+ will debut as a new local rightsholder, focusing on coverage of events involving Indian athletes.[59]

For the first time in Chile, the Paralympic Committee of Chile announced that the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games will be broadcast on TVN.[60]

In Brazil, the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games will be broadcast on TV Globo, SporTV and TV Brasil.[61][62]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Only an English motto is used during the Games. There is no Japanese equivalent of the motto adopted.[1]
  2. ↑ Neutral athletes from Russia, competing under the flag of the Russian Paralympic Committee

References

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  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  43. ↑ Badminton originally to be held at Youth Plaza Arena; venue moved in June 2015. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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External links

Preceded by Summer Paralympics
Tokyo
XVI Paralympic Summer Games (2020)		 Succeeded by
Paris

Template:EventsAt2020SummerParalympics Template:NPCsin2020SummerParalympics

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