The Paralympic sports comprise all the sports contested in the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. As of 2020, the Summer Paralympics included 22 sports and 539 medal events, and the Winter Paralympics include 5 sports and disciplines and about 80 events. The number and kinds of events may change from one Paralympic Games to another.
The Summer Paralympics, also known as the Games of the Paralympiad, are an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete. This includes athletes with mobility disabilities, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. The Paralympic Games are held every four years, organized by the International Paralympic Committee. Medals are awarded in every event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that the Olympic Games started in 1904.
The Winter Paralympic Games is an international multi-sport event where athletes with physical disabilities compete in snow and ice sports. The event includes athletes with mobility impairments, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. The Winter Paralympic Games are held every four years directly following the Winter Olympic Games and hosted in the same city. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) oversees the Games. Medals are awarded in each event: with gold for first place, silver for second, and bronze for third, following the tradition that the Olympic Games began in 1904.
Katherine Proudfoot is a cerebral palsy athlete from Australia competing mainly in throwing events. She competed in the F36 classification at the 2008, 2012 and the 2016 Summer Paralympics, winning medals at each Game. Following a medical review request in early 2017, she now competes in seated throws in the F32 classification. At the 2017 Australian Athletics Championships she threw 7.04m in the Women's Shot Put Secured event, bettering the Women's F32 shot put world record mark of 6.55m.
T35 is a disability sport classification for disability athletics' running competitions. It includes people who have coordination impairments such as hypertonia, ataxia and athetosis. This includes people with cerebral palsy. The classification is used at the Paralympic Games. The corresponding F35 classification includes club and discus throw, shot put, and javelin.
Jodi Elkington-Jones is Australian athlete who has cerebral palsy. She represented Australia at the 2012 Summer Paralympics and has also competed in two Commonwealth Games, winning gold in the 2014 Games in the F37/38 long jump. She represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics in athletics.
Ahmed Kelly is an Iraqi-born Australian Paralympic swimmer. At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, his third games, he won the silver medal in the Men's 150 m individual medley SM3.
Para-athletics classification is a system to determine which athletes with disabilities may compete against each other in para-athletics events. Classification is intended to group together athletes with similar levels of physical ability to allow fair competition. Classification was created and is managed by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), which is regularly published via its IPC Athletics Classification Handbook. People with physical, vision and intellectual disabilities are eligible to compete in this sport at the Summer Paralympics. The classification for this sport was created during the 1940s and for much of its early history was a medical condition based classification system. The classification system has subsequently become a functional mobility based one, and is moving towards an evidence-based classification system.
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 three additional classes: S11, S12 and S13. One more class, S14, is reserved for swimmers with intellectual impairment. A final class, S15, is for athletes with hearing loss.
Para-archery classification is the classification system for para-archery used to create a level playing field for archers with a different range of disabilities. Governance in the sport is through the International Archery Federation. Early classification systems for the sport were created during the 1940s and based on medical classification. This has subsequently changed to a functional mobility classification with the exception of blind archery.
Paralympic powerlifting classification is the system designed for disability based powerlifting to insure that there is level competition across a range of disabilities. Categories are broken down based on weight. The sport's classification is governed by International Paralympic Committee Powerlifting. People with physical disabilities are eligible to compete in this sport.
Paralympic Shooting classification is the shooting classification in place for the Paralympic Games to help establish fair competition. Classification is governed by the International Paralympic Committee's IPC Shooting. While there are currently three classifications, there were originally five in international competitions. People with physical disabilities as defined by the International Paralympic Committee are eligible to compete.
Boccia classification is the classification system governing boccia, a sport designed specifically for people with disabilities. Classification is handled by Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association. There are four classifications for this sport. All four classes are eligible to compete at the Paralympic Games.
Para-equestrian is an equestrian sport governed by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI), and includes two competitive events: One is para-equestrian dressage, which is conducted under the same basic rules as conventional dressage, but with riders divided into different competition grades based on their functional abilities. The other is para-equestrian driving, which operates under the same basic rules as combined driving but places competitors in various grades based on their functional abilities.
The World Para Athletics European Championships, known prior to 2018 as the IPC Athletics European Championships is an event organized by World Para Athletics, the international athletics federation established under the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in 2016. Athletes with a physical disability compete, and there is also a specific category for athletes with an intellectual disability. Organised biennially, the original Games ran from 2003 to 2005 as an Open Championship but the event was frozen in 2005, but returned in 2012 in Stadskanaal, Netherlands.
Ella Azura Pardy is an Australian Paralympic athlete who competes in the T38 100m, 200m and long jump. She represented Australia at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in long jump and the 2015 IPC Athletics World Championships. She represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics in athletics where she won a bronze medal and the 2020 Summer Paralympics.
Ahmad Almutairi is a Kuwaiti para-sport athlete who competes as a T33 classification track and field athlete and as a wheelchair basketball player, both at national level. Despite the fact that Almutairi held the Paralympic world record for his classification in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m events, major world titles eluded him due to the fact that his classification was under-represented and he was forced to compete against less severely disabled athletes in the T44 class. He eventually won a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Paralympics.
The Independent Paralympic Athletes Team, a team consisting of refugee and asylee Paralympic athletes, competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 7 September to 18 September 2016. Its creation was announced on 5 August 2016.
Natalia Jasińska is a Polish Paralympic athlete who competes in sprinting and long jump events in international level events.
Alhassane Baldé is a Guinean-born German Paralympic athlete who competes in long-distance running events in international level events.
Poland 
