
Sitting Volleyball’s inclusion in the sports program for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games was down to the “worldwide participation and reach of Sitting Volleyball, which is something that the World ParaVolley Membership plans and delivers at the national level,” World ParaVolley President Barry Couzner OAM said.
Photo: World ParaVolley President Barry Couzner OAM with 2018 Sitting Volleyball Women’s World Championship Most Complete Player and Best Spiker Iuliia Mednikova of Russia
This follow’s the confirmation that the sports program for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will remain the same as Tokyo’s – with the same 24 sports at Tokyo 2020, including Sitting Volleyball, having been confirmed by the International Paralympic Committee to feature four years later on.
“On behalf of World ParaVolley, I am very pleased to announce that the IPC has approved the inclusion of Sitting Volleyball on the Paris 2024 Sports Program of the Paralympic Games,” Couzner added. “Every four years each sport is required to provide a submission to the IPC for inclusion in the Paralympic Games and the World ParaVolley Board has worked effectively to ensure that this highest of events has Sitting Volleyball on the Program. It is critical to our ongoing promotion and development. Such inclusion is also a product of the worldwide participation and reach of Sitting Volleyball which is something that the Membership plans and delivers at the national level. Thus a great team effort by all of World ParaVolley has reaped a wonderful reward – participation in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games!! Many thanks to all!”
Men’s Sitting Volleyball first entered the Paralympic program in 1980 with women joining in 2004.
World ParaVolley has targeted Los Angeles 2028 to having Beach ParaVolley (Standing) included in the Olympic Program with its first World Series event event – the 2019 Pingtan Beach World Series Open set to take place on 9-12 May 2019 in Pingtan, Fuzhou, China.