Monday, 28 August 2023
Today marks one-year-to-go until the flame is lit at the heart of Paris in-between the iconic Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées. The lighting of the flame will mark the start of the 17th Paralympic Games that will take place over the course of 12 days from 28 August to 8 September 2024.
In Paris, the sport will unfold in the historical gardens of the Palace of Versailles. The castle and its surroundings are the embodiment of beauty and grandeur and without a doubt, will set the scene for one of the most memorable equestrian venues of all time.
A total of 78 athlete and horse combinations from around the world are eligible to compete for 33 medals awarded across the Team, Individual and Freestyle Events.
A total of 15 slots are available for the Para Dressage Team competition in Paris, with each qualifying nation eligible to send up to four athletes, for a total of 60 athletes.
France, as the host country, directly qualified for first slot while seven countries – the Netherlands, Denmark, USA, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Italy – secured their ticket to the Paralympic Games through the ECCO FEI World Championships 2022 in Herning (DEN).
The FEI Para Dressage European Championships, which will take place in Riesenbeck (GER) in September 2023, will provide another opportunity for the top ranked team from the competition (not otherwise qualified) to secure a place in Paris.
Four other team slots will be filled by the highest ranked teams from the region of Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, while the two highest ranking teams on the overall FEI Paralympic Team Ranking List (published on 31 December 2023) will also qualify.
A further 15 individual athletes will also be eligible to compete, these will be the top three ranked athletes from the FEI Paralympic Individual Ranking List (published on 31 December 2023) for each of the following regions: Europe, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, Africa and in addition, three individual places will be allocated by the FEI and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
Equestrian made its debut appearance at the Paralympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and was markedly different from the sport we know today, with Athletes competing on borrowed horses until the 2004 Paralympic Games.
In the last decade, the Para Equestrian community has seen some incredible progress with the quality of horse and athlete combinations competing at Paralympic level.
For the first time since Para Dressage was included in the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, there was not a single riding school horse at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
The competition in Tokyo saw higher than ever scores being reached, with all individual freestyle gold medallists recording scores of more than 80%, a benchmark in Dressage. The degree of difficulty of tests has also increased during this time, making the achievements of the Para Equestrian athletes even more impressive. As Grade I individual freestyle silver medallist Rihards Snikus (LAT) in Tokyo said, “Para Dressage is coming so close to Dressage in what judges want to see from horse and rider.”
As was the case with the Paralympic Games in Tokyo 2020, there will be full media coverage of all para sports in Paris, which is expected to reach a viewership of 3.4 million during the Games period.
Building on the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) slogan “Change starts with Sport”, the Olympic and Paralympic Games Organising Committee for Paris 2024 are viewing the Paralympic Games as a unique opportunity to bring about social change by promoting inclusive professional and sports opportunities for people with disabilities.