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Paralympic Athletics - London 2012

Speed, strength, power and stamina will be on display during the Athletics competition, the largest sport at the Paralympic Games.

Did you know?

At Sydney 2000, US track athlete Marla Runyan, a five-time Paralympic champion, became the first visually impaired athlete to compete at the Olympic Games, finishing eighth in the 1500m Final.

‘Hoopla’ – based on the playground game, where rings are thrown onto a target pole – was an Athletics event at the original Stoke Mandeville International Games.

Since 2005, Great Britain has hosted the annual Paralympic World Cup Athletics meeting at the City of Manchester Stadium.

Key facts

Venues: Olympic Stadium (track and field events); The Mall (road events)
Dates: Friday 31 August – Sunday 9 September 2012
Medal events: 170
Athletes: 1,100 (740 men, 360 women)

With 1,100 athletes competing for 166 gold medals, Athletics is the largest sport on the Paralympic programme. There are various different strands to the competition: track events, in distances from 100m to 5,000m; field events, which include the High Jump and Shot Put; and the Marathon, which is held on the roads. Some athletes compete in wheelchairs or throwing frames, others with prostheses, and others with the guidance of a sighted companion.

The basics

Staged in the brand new Olympic Stadium, the track events will be held over distances ranging from 100m to 5,000m. Track events may begin with heats, with the best athletes eventually qualifying for the finals.

The field events broadly fall into two categories. The list of throwing events includes Discus, Javelin, Shot Put and Club Throw, while the programme of jumping events includes High Jump, Long Jump and Triple Jump.

The men’s and women’s Marathons will be held on the streets of central London and will be straight finals.

Paralympic Athletics, past and present

Part of the Paralympic programme since the first Games in Rome in 1960, the sport of Athletics has produced some of the most iconic images in the history of the Paralympic movement, with legendary figures such as Louise Sauvage, Baroness Grey-Thompson and Oscar Pistorius making their names before a worldwide audience.

For London 2012, all track and field events will be held at the Olympic Stadium in the new Olympic Park. This state-of-the-art venue, which will have a capacity of 80,000 during the Games, will also host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

Jargon buster

- Cage: The area from which competitors throw a discus or club. The mouth of the cage is 6m wide, and sits 7m in front of the centre of the throwing circle.
- Countback: The process used to determine the winner of any field event in which two or more athletes are tied.
- Guide runner: Visually impaired runners use a guide runner, usually someone from their own country, to assist them in completing the course of a race safely and as quickly as possible by running alongside them during the race and ‘guiding’ them to stay in their lane.
- Lifting: When throwing from a throwing frame, seated athletes sometimes finish in a standing position before releasing the implement. This is called ‘lifting’, and is against the rules if the athlete doesn’t have a foot on the ground.
- Points score: In field events that are contested by athletes from different classification groups, a points score will be used to determine the winners.
See Paralympic Athletics in action on ParalympicSportTV

Get involved

The UK is home to a huge network of athletics clubs and leagues. Contact UK Athletics, the British Wheelchair Athletics Association, Wheelpower and IPC Athletics. You can learn more about how to get involved on the Parasport website.