Ahmed Al Badwawi and Maryam Al Zeyoudi to be UAE flag-bearers at Paralympics 2024

Cyclist and shot-putter set to lead out team at opening ceremony in Paris on Wednesday

UAE Paralympic athletes Maryam Al Zeyoudi and Ahmed Al Badwawi. Photos: WAM; UAE Paralympic Committee

Cyclist Ahmed Al Badwawi and shot-putter Maryam Al Zeyoudi will be the UAE’s flag-bearers at Wednesday's opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Paralympics.

The pair are part of a 13-strong UAE team due to compete in the Games who will be taking their bow at the Place de la Concorde in the French capital.

And there are high hopes of success among the team, which includes Abdullah Sultan Al Aryani who is aiming for a sixth Paralympic medal in the shooting, on the back of two golds and three silvers in what will be his fifth Games.

In wheelchair racing, Mohammed Al Hammadi – UAE's flag-bearer in the 2020 Tokyo Games – will be hoping to add to the one gold, two silver and one bronze medals already safely secured since his debut at London 2012.

Paris has just finished hosting the Olympics with many of the same venues hosting Paralympic competitions, including the Grand Palais, which scored rave reviews for its hosting of the fencing and taekwondo under an ornate roof.

The La Defense Arena is back as well, hosting the 141 gold-medal events in para-swimming, as is the Stade de France where track and field again takes place.

The temporary venue beside the Eiffel Tower, where beach volleyball took place during the Olympics, will host blind soccer, an adaptation of the game for visually impaired players in teams of five with a ball containing rattles.

“We’ve got some monstrous iconic sites, and we’re going to get an eyeful,” France's para triathlon champion, Alexis Hanquinquant, said. “Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. We’re going to have some pretty exceptional Paralympic Games.”

The Games will open with a ceremony in Place de la Concorde, the square in the centre of Paris where skateboarding and other “urban” sports took place during the Olympics.

Just as for the Olympics ceremony on the River Seine, the ceremony takes place away from the main stadium for the first time at a Paralympics.

The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville hospital in England, the birthplace of the Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel.

Theatre director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympics opening ceremony, said there was a deep symbolism in putting the Paralympics ceremony in the centre of the French capital – a city whose Metro system, in particular, is completely unadapted to the needs of wheelchair users.

"Putting Paralympic athletes in the heart of the city is already a political marker in the sense that the city is not sufficiently adapted to every handicapped person," Jolly said.

Organisers say Paris buses, in contrast, are wheelchair-friendly and they have laid on 1,000 specially adapted taxis as well. Sluggish ticket sales have picked up since the Olympics and organisers say more than 1.9 million have now been sold.

The first day of competition starts on Thursday, when there will be medals to be won in para taekwondo, para table tennis, para swimming and para cycling on the track.

As was the case for the Olympics, there will medals up for grabs on each of the 11 days of competition.

Many of the competing athletes have titles to defend including para-powerlifter Sherif Osman of Egypt, who is going for his fourth gold medal having also won one silver.

Para shooter Avani Lekhara, the first Indian woman to win a pair of medals at a single edition of the Paralympics, returns to defend her 10-meter air rifle gold in the SH1 category from Tokyo.

Iranian volleyball star Morteza Mehrzad – who, at 2.46 metres, is the tallest athlete ever to compete in the Paralympics – will be hoping to secure a third gold after helping his country to victory at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

Mehrzad was diagnosed at a young age with acromegaly, a rare condition due to excessive growth hormone.

During his teenage years, he had a bicycle accident, injuring his pelvis and stunting the growth in his right leg, which is now around six inches shorter than his left leg.

"I turned limitations into opportunities," said Mehrzad. "I cannot say those limitations totally went away, but they lessened over time since joining the team."