Jessica Tatiana Long is a Russian-born American Paralympic swimmer from Baltimore, Maryland, who competes in the S8, SB7 and SM8 category events. She has held many world records and competed at six Paralympic Games, winning 30 medals. She has won over 50 world championship medals.
Ziv Better is a former Paralympic swimmer representing Israel at the Paralympics.
Trischa Zorn is an American Paralympic swimmer. Blind from birth, she competed in Paralympic swimming. She is the most successful athlete in the history of the Paralympic Games, having won 55 medals, and was inducted into the Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2012. She took the Paralympic Oath for athletes at the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta.
S6, SB5, SM6 are para-swimming classifications used for categorising swimmers based on their level of disability. This class includes people with a number of different types of disability including short stature, major limb impairment or loss in two limbs. This includes people with cerebral palsy, people with dwarfism and amputees. The class competes at the Paralympic Games.
Ahmed Kelly is an Iraqi-born Australian Paralympic swimmer. He has competed at four Paralympics Games, winning two silver medals.
Grant Patterson is an Australian Paralympic swimmer. At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, his second games, he won a silver and bronze medal. At the 2024 Paris Paralympics, he won two bronze medals.
Para-swimming classification is a function-based classification system designed to allow for fair competition in disability swimming. The classes are prefixed with "S" for freestyle, butterfly and backstroke events, "SB" for breaststroke and "SM" for individual medley events. Swimmers with physical disabilities are divided into ten classes based on their degree of functional disability: S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, S8, S9 and S10. The lower number indicates a greater degree of impairment. Those with visual impairments are placed in classes S11, S12 and S13. Class S15 is for athletes with hearing loss. Additional classes may be reserved for swimmers with intellectual impairment: S14, S18 for swimmers with Down Syndrome or class-S14 intellectual impairment combined with a physical impairment, and S19 for swimmers with autism.
Joseph William Walker, OAM is an Australian swimmer with an intellectual disability. At the 1992 Paralympic Games for Persons with Mental Handicap, he won nine gold medals from nine events.
Jeanette Clare Chippington, is a British Paralympic swimmer and paracanoeist. Chippington has represented Great Britain at seven Paralympics, five in swimming Summer Paralympics, 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. Competing as a S6 classification swimmer she favoured mainly 50 m and 100m freestyle competitions. After retiring from swimming Chippington returned to disability sport, becoming a world class paracanoeist, winning gold at the 2016 Summer Paralympics and bronze at 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
The 2016 IPC Swimming European Championships was an international swimming competition. It was held in Funchal, Madeira running from 30 April to 7 May. Around 450 athletes from 50 different countries attended the competition. This was the last major swimming tournament for disabled athletes prior to the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio, and acted as a qualifying event for the Rio Games. To increase the possibility of qualification for top swimmers, the championships was made an Open tournament allowing competitors from countries outside Europe to compete.
Ingrid Thunem is a Norwegian Paralympic swimmer. She competes in S1, SB1 (breaststroke) and SM1 events, swimming with motor function in just one arm. She is a multiple world record holder in her classification.
Song Lingling is a Chinese Paralympic swimmer competing in the S6 class. She has won two silver and a gold paralympic medal.
Robin Hugh Surgeoner is a British retired swimmer. He won nine gold medals across three Paralympic Games competing as a British Paralympian in C4 events. Surgeoner was one of the original members of the British Paralympic Association committee. He now works as a swim coach, as an inclusion empowerment consultant and musician.
Oksana Khrul is a Ukrainian para-swimmer, competing in S6, SM6 and SB7 categories.
Antonios Tsapatakis is a Greek Paralympic swimmer. He became a T8-9 complete paraplegic after a spinal cord injury due to a motorbike accident in 2006. He competes in 100m breaststroke SB4 classification.
Swimming at the 2020 Summer Paralympics was held at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre. There were 146 events - six fewer events than the 2016 Summer Paralympics. Swimming is the second largest sport: behind athletics and ahead of table tennis.
