Para Canoe

Paracanoe is the canoeing category for athletes with disabilities, and races are contested by two types of boat, kayak (K) and va’a (V). The kayak is propelled by a double-blade paddle, but the va’a is an outrigger canoe equipped with an ama (second pontoon) as a support float and a single-blade paddle. Both kayak and va’a have three different classes of event for men and women, based on the classification of an athlete’s impairment, with KL1, KL2 and KL3 for kayak and VL1, VL2 and VL3 for va’a. At international level, all paracanoe races are individual events and competed at a distance of 200m.

The International Canoe Federation (ICF) established Paracanoe to allow athletes with disabilities to participate in the sport. The sport received exhibition status under the name paddleability during the 2009 Canoe Sprint World Championships in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, and was officially recognised as paracanoe at the next year’s tournament in Poznan, Poland. Later in 2010, at a conference in Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced that paracanoe would make its Paralympic Games debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The Games featured six medal events (three for men and three for women), all of which were in the kayak category.

Va’a will make its Paralympic debut in Tokyo in 2020, with three medal events – two for men and one for women – for a total of nine races on the paracanoe programme.