The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will be a spectacular event. What can be more thrilling than the archery event when it will be held from Aug 29 to Sep 5 at the Esplanade des Invalides? This venue, where the Olympic archery tournament is also scheduled to take place, is where para archery’s top talent will be aiming for victory. A total of nine gold medals are up for grabs across men’s individual, women’s individual, and mixed team events, with three distinct para categories: Recurve, Compound, and W1. Yet it only goes to 140 para archers, who are decided through paralympic qualifications and further broken down into a series of archery games. Here, we listed the complete qualifications procedure for para archers to qualify for the archery event at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Understanding the Categories
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Unlike the Olympic Games, where archers compete exclusively in the recurve category. The Paralympic Games feature three categories: Recurve, Compound, and W1. The recurve and the compound categories will be recognizable to audiences who follow able-bodied competitions. While the W1 is reserved for athletes with higher degrees of disability.
The total of 140 spots available at the Paralympic Games Archery is distributed across these categories in the following manner:
- Recurve Men: 30 spots
- Recurve Women: 24 spots
- Compound Men: 32 spots
- Compound Women: 28 spots
- W1 Men: 13 spots
- W1 Women: 13 spots
This distribution is in proportion to the participation in these categories at the world championships. It’s worth noting that 75% of the participants are male and 65% are female. It is closer to gender balance than in the last Games, like Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016.
The Three Phases of Qualification
The paralympic qualifications process can be divided into three phases:
Para-archers, unlike other para-sports athletes, do not automatically qualify for Paralympics as individuals. Instead, they get quota places for their countries. They then have their own system that they have to use to choose which of their athletes are worthy to compete in Paris. Each country can get a maximum of two quota places for each category.
The qualification process is divided into three phases:
Primary Qualifier
A large number of quota places, a total of 78, were granted during the World Archery Para Championships that took place from July 17 through July 23 in Pilsen, Czech Republic. The process of distribution of places included a provision for places to be awarded to countries that reached the mixed team competitions in non-intervention, while other places were given based on the ranking of countries driven by individual results.
Continental Qualifiers
Additional quota spots are distributed through continental qualification tournaments:
- European Championships (European qualifier): August 10-20, 2023, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, for 10 places.
- Para Pan Am Games (America qualifier): The simulation will take place from November 18-22, 2023, in Santiago, Chile, for 10 places.
- Asian Championships (Asian qualifier): November 16-25, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand, self-organized for 10 places.
- Africa/Oceania Combined Qualifier: March 4, 2024, in Dubai, UAE, for 6 places.
Final Qualifier
The last opportunity to qualify for the event will be given during the final world qualification tournament that will be held in Dubai, UAE, on March 5, 2024. The opportunity will provide 12 places in the various categories available out there.
Besides these phases, 8 more qualification spaces will be allocated to the emerging para-archery nations by universality invitations. While the host nation, France, will be entitled to 6 quota places, one in each category.
Minimum Performance Standards
Securing a quota place is the initial achievement, but the remainder is another story. To get to the finals in Paris, there’s also the question of qualifying performance during 72 arrow qualification round. These standards make it that all participants have attained some level of skills in international competition between the period of July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024.
The minimum scores are as follows:
- Recurve Men: 570 points
- Recurve Women: 530 points
- Compound Men: 650 points
- Compound Women: 620 points
- W1 Men: 590 points
- W1 Women: 520 points
These standards for performance have to be attained or bettered at least within a recognized international event for an archer to qualify for the Games.
Final Thoughts
The route to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games is tough and filled with only the best para-archers who will receive the chance to compete. Every stage, starting from primary qualifiers up to continental tournaments and culminating with the final qualifier in Dubai, matters if the team is to get to Paris. Less than a year after the Games. These athletes will be striving not only for personal achievement but for their country’s pride in the world’s biggest stages.
