Paralympic Champion Navdeep Singh's javelin category not on LA2028 roster

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) on Tuesday revealed the medal events and athlete quotas for the LA28 Paralympic Games.

The quadrennial event at Los Angeles will feature a roster of 23 para-sports offering 560 medal events.

The para athletics program has seen the most number of changes, as six events from the men's competition have been reduced, and inclusions have been made to the women's roster to increase the gender parity.

India's Paralympic champion Navdeep Singh's Men's Javelin Throw F41 and the double Paralympic medalist Yogesh Kathuniya's Men's Discus throw F56 event are two of the six events discarded from the LA28 roster.

Incidentally, Navdeep won his first Paralympic gold medal in Paris 2024 with a new personal best of 47.32m, while Yogesh doubled his medal tally with a second consecutive silver medal at the same games in the French capital.

This change can make a significant impact on India's medal tally as two of the prominent Indian athletes now look certain to miss the LA Paralympics 2028.

India has 60 Paralympic medals to their name – 16 gold, 21 Silver, 23 Bronze - out of which 29 medals were won by Indian athletes at the 2024 Paris Paralympics.

Increased quota places

In 2028, there will be 4,480 athlete quota places (more than the quota places of Paris 2024 and Tokyo 2020) as para climbing will debut a LA, adding 80 extra athlete quotas to the roster.

Across the 22 core sports, there will be 243 medal events for women (44 per cent), eight more than for Paris 2024, while the number of medal events for male athletes has been reduced by eight to 263 (48 per cent). The number of open or mixed gender medal events has increased by three to 46 (eight per cent).

Of the 4,400 athlete quota places available across the 22 sports initially included, 1,967 are for women Para athletes (45 per cent), 107 more than for Paris 2024.

There will be 2,228 quota slots for male Para athletes (51 per cent), 27 more than Paris 2024, and 205 gender-free slots (five per cent), a reduction of 134 places.

For the second successive Paralympic Games, the men’s and women’s medal events in goalball, sitting volleyball, and wheelchair basketball will each feature eight teams. Eight teams will also contest the blind football and wheelchair rugby competitions.

Para climbing, a sport proposed by the Organising Committee and approved by the IPC Governing Board for a Paralympic debut at LA28, will have eight medal events (four male and four female) and have a maximum of 10 athletes contesting each medal event.