A record 4,400 athletes from more than 160 countries are competing in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, with 549 medal events across 22 sports. To give an idea of how much the event has grown, at the 1964 Tokyo games there were 375 athletes from 21 countries competing in just nine events. During this time, the Paralympics have evolved from an event for second world war military with spinal cord injuries to now welcoming ten different impairment types, managed using an athlete classification system.