Paralympic archery programme to remain unchanged at Paris 2024

Archery will award nine gold medals at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games with the programme of events unchanged from those featured at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

A complete list of medal events was released by the International Paralympic Committee today.

Para athletes compete in one of three competition categories at the Games: compound open, recurve open and W1. Each category has three events: men’s individual, women’s individual and mixed team (featuring one man and one woman).

The current programme was introduced following an overhaul of archery’s classification process that took place in 2014.

It is as yet unannounced whether the number or distribution of quota places will be changed for Paris. A total of 140 para athletes competed in the archery events at Tokyo 2020.

The gender distribution of the quotas was not equal – and it is a goal of World Archery’s para committee to achieve parity between men and women at the Paralympics by 2028.

In support of this aim, it was recently announced that the para team event (in which teams consisted of three athletes of one gender) would be removed from the world championships in favour of a doubles tournament.

This has not affected the Paralympic programme.

The founder of the Paralympic movement, Dr Ludwig Guttmann, used archery as a rehabilitation activity for wounded veterans. He organised the Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralysed in 1948, which was an archery competition between 16 people and the precursor to the Paralympics.

Archery was then featured at the first Paralympic Games in Rome in 1960 and has remained on the programme ever since.