2024 Paralympics: Fencers and equestrians make competition debut

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00:00James Vecina is standing by at the Grand Palais for us and we can go across to him now.

00:04James, good afternoon. Fencing is underway with French athletes getting things underway.

00:11Yes, absolutely Dylan. As you mentioned, very similar in a way to what was going on in the

00:16Olympics. Just like in the Olympics, the wheelchair fencing is taking place in the Grand Palais just

00:21behind us. It's normally a building reserved for the arts but it's a different kind of arts that's

00:26taking place today. That arts being that of the wheelchair fencing and it differs in just a few

00:35ways of course as compared to the Olympics. One of them being, as you mentioned there, that it's all

00:40about the upper body. It takes place in wheelchairs so the athletes are separated. The separation

00:45distance between the two is determined by the one with the shorter arms and that's from which they

00:49compete. Then after that, well there's two main categories. Category A and B. Those two categories

00:55define how much movement an athlete has in their upper body. So depending on that, they'll be

01:01competing in separate categories to try and even things out between different fences. Now if there's

01:06one name that you need to remember and take note of is that is of Bebe Fio. She is a twice gold

01:13champion in the foil category, the Italian 27 year old. You might have heard about her previously,

01:19not necessarily only just about fencing. She's very vocal about getting people with disabilities

01:24into sports, making sports more accessible to them. She's also very vocal about getting

01:29vaccination for meningitis. Well Bebe Fio begins actually not today but tomorrow straight into the

01:35quarterfinals. She tries to win another gold in the foil. She competes in that B category. As you

01:41mentioned, the French opening things today. A win and a loss so far. Maxime Vallée winning it for

01:46the French. The French who actually have the most medals in the wheelchair fencing ever since

01:52its creation. Wheelchair fencing has been around since the start of the Paralympics. That was in

01:561960. 144 medals for the French, way ahead of China, more than double. We want to keep that

02:02continuing here in Paris. There are 16 in all, 16 events because of course the Paralympics are

02:07divided into categories depending on other disabilities, depending on how much impact

02:13their disability has on the fencer. So there'll be 16 categories and medals, gold medals there

02:18up for grabs here in Paris 2024 with all of this getting underway as we speak and we'll have more

02:23results for you in just a few hours time. James, thank you very much for that. James

02:27Lucena joining us there from the Grand Palais.

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