MILAN — MILAN (AP) — The Winter Paralympics formally begin on Friday, with the opening ceremony in Verona, Italy.

With 665 Para athletes and 79 units of medals to be awarded, Milan Cortina will function a document variety of athletes and medals.

They may compete throughout six sports activities: Para alpine snowboarding, Para biathlon, Para cross-country snowboarding, Para ice hockey, Para snowboard and wheelchair curling.

Within the snowboarding sports activities — Para alpine snowboarding, Para biathlon, Para cross-country snowboarding — athletes compete in certainly one of three classes: standing, sitting (on a sit-ski or monoski) or imaginative and prescient impaired (who race following a information related by way of radio).

Guides additionally obtain medals.

Inside every of those three classes skiers compete in several divisions relying on their practical skill. A outcomes calculation system determines the factored time of every athlete, which permits athletes from completely different divisions to race towards one another.

Right here’s a take a look at the sports activities:

Launched on the first Winter Paralympics in 1976, it consists of 5 occasions: slalom, big slalom, super-G, downhill and tremendous mixed.

There are 30 medal occasions — 15 for males and 15 for girls.

Within the sitting class, athletes use a specialised monoski, a seat mounted on a single ski with a shock absorber that helps with using on uneven terrain and making turns.

In Para biathlon and Para cross-country, the sit-ski is a sitting machine mounted on a pair of cross nation skis.

Para alpine snowboarding will happen on the Olympia delle Tofane course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the identical iconic course that held the ladies’s alpine snowboarding on the not too long ago concluded Winter Olympics.

Combines the power and endurance of cross-country snowboarding with the precision and composure of goal taking pictures.

There are three occasions in every class — 7.5-kilometer dash, 12.5-kilometer particular person and dash pursuit — and women and men compete in separate races, for a complete of 18 medal occasions.

The ski course is tackled a number of instances and between every lap athletes shoot at 5 steel targets positioned 10 meters away. For every missed shot they get a time penalty or must ski a penalty loop, relying on the occasion.

Athletes with disabilities within the higher limbs will be assisted by their coaches in positioning the rifle and pulling the set off at their course. Within the imaginative and prescient impairment class, athletes are aided by acoustic targets which point out how shut they’re to the goal earlier than taking pictures.

The game was launched for athletes with bodily disabilities on the 1988 Innsbruck Paralympic Video games and for athletes with visible disabilities in 1992 at Albertville.

At Milan Cortina, Para biathlon will happen on the Tesero Cross-Nation Snowboarding Stadium.

This may even happen in Tesero and has a complete of 20 medal occasions.

There are three occasions for women and men (throughout the three classes): dash, 10-kilometer interval begin basic, 20-kilometer interval begin free. There’s additionally the blended 4×2.5-kilometer relay, and open 4×2.5-kilometer relay.

For every competitors, there are separate programs for athletes within the sitting class and for athletes within the standing and imaginative and prescient impaired classes. The programs for the athletes within the sitting class have decrease gradients because the athletes depend on the higher physique for pushing/pulling themselves ahead whereas on a sit-ski.

A relay crew will be made up of two, three or 4 athletes (plus guides as acceptable) with athletes in a position to ski a couple of leg.

Para ice hockey was invented at a rehabilitation middle in Stockholm, Sweden, through the early Sixties by a gaggle of Swedes who, regardless of their bodily impairment, wished to proceed taking part in hockey.

It debuted within the Winter Paralympics at Lillehammer in 1994 and includes athletes with a bodily incapacity of their decrease limbs. Matches encompass three 15-minute durations.

Moderately than skates, gamers use double blade sledges that permit the puck to slip beneath and have two sticks, which have a spike-end for propulsion and a blade-end for dealing with the puck.

Para ice hockey is a blended gender sport, though solely two groups at Milan Cortina have a feminine of their squads — Japan and Slovakia.

Furthermore, solely three feminine ice hockey gamers have ever participated on the Paralympic Video games: Norwegians Brit Mjaasund Oeyen in 1994 and Lena Schroeder at Pyeongchang in 2018, and Yu Jing of China at Beijing in 2022.

America shall be seeking to full a three-peat, having received each the males’s and girls’s tournaments on the latest Winter Olympics. The U.S. has additionally received the Para ice hockey at 5 of the previous six editions of the Winter Paralympics, with solely Canada interrupting that streak in 2006.

Competitors will happen on the new Santagiulia enviornment in Milan. There are eight groups, cut up into two teams. The groups play one another crew of their group as soon as in a round-robin format, with the highest two from every group advancing to the semifinals.

Debuted in Sochi in 2014 as a part of the alpine snowboarding program, though there have been a various variety of occasions at subsequent Olympics.

At Milan Cortina there are two occasions throughout three classes for males relying on the incapacity and one class for girls.

There are two classes for males with lower-limb impairments and one for these with upper-limb impairments, whereas there’s one class for girls with lower-limb impairments.

Para snowboarders with a incapacity affecting one or each legs can use prosthetics or modified gear to compete.

The 2 occasions are banked slalom and snowboard cross and can happen in Cortina. In banked slalom, athletes get two particular person runs down the course with their finest time counting towards the ultimate rating.

The heats and the finals of the snowboard cross will see 4 athletes racing on the similar time. The highest two advance from the heats after which the primary throughout the end line within the last wins.

The mixed-team occasion for athletes with bodily disabilities of their legs is celebrating its twentieth anniversary after being launched the final time the Paralympics had been held in Italy, in 2006.

Gamers can select whether or not to throw the stone alone or with a teammate who holds the wheelchair regular. Athletes can use an extender so as to add pace and course.

There are eight ends per sport, two lower than video games on the Olympics, and there’s no sweeping.

Competitors will happen on the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium and this system will function a blended doubles competitors for the primary time in addition to the common blended crew occasion.

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AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games