Paris 2024 Paralympic Games: history, rules, records... everything you need to know about wheelchair rugby

From August 29 to September 2, rugby à 7 events will take place in Paris, at the Arena Champ de Mars, for this 2024 edition of the Paralympic Games. Rules, history of the sport, records... Find out all you need to know about the Paralympic version of the oval ball sport.

In the big rugby family, there are disciplines practiced at the Olympic Games, such as rugby à 7, which saw themen's French team win the Olympic title at the Paris 2024 Games. At the Paralympic Games, it's armchair rugby that's played, a variant created to find a mixed team sport accessible to athletes with four-limb impairment.

Invented in Canadain the 1970s, wheelchair rugby was included in the Olympic program for the very first time at the Atlanta Paralympic Games in 1996, as a demonstration discipline. It was officially included in the Paralympic program at the Sydney Games in 2000.

The rules

Wheelchair rugby is played with a manual wheelchair, by teams of four players, and combines elements of wheelchair basketball, rugby and handball. Here, the ball is round rather than oval, and matches are divided into four periods of eight minutes each. Wheelchair rugby is played on a basketball court with a goal line at each end, the aim being for players to cross the opposing goal line in possession of the ball and prevent their opponents from doing the same.

The discipline is known to be relatively brutal: in fact, excessive contact and grabbing an opponent with the hands are penalized. Players can be either attackers or defenders: depending on the position, the chair is not the same. The rules are inspired by rugby, basketball and field hockey (according to Olympics.com): the player in possession of the ball must dribble at least once or make a pass every 10 seconds. In total, the players on a team have 40 seconds to score a point from the moment the team is in possession of the ball. Unlike traditional rugby, forward passes are permitted.

Each player is awarded a number of points (from 0.5 to 3.5) according to their degree of handicap, and a team can score a maximum of eight points in total.