Wheelchair rugby is one of the Paralympic Games’ most dramatic and popular sports. Often called ‘murderball’ due to its aggressive, high-impact drama – including noisy contact and chairs flipping over – it comprises of four frantic eight-minute quarters that rarely fail to entertain.
Eight teams line up at Paris 2024. Alongside the hosts France are the European and reigning Paralympic champions Great Britain, Asia-Oceania-Africa champions Japan, 2023 Parapan American Games champions USA, and three sides that progressed from the 2024 Paralympic Qualification tournament which took place in Wellington, New Zealand – Australia, Canada and Germany.
The competitors will clash between 29 August and 2 September at the beautiful Champ de Mars Arena, a temporary, sustainable timber structure that will also host Paris 2024 Olympic Games judo and wrestling, and which will be dismantled after the competition.
The sport is played in specially designed manual wheelchairs by a team of four players and combines elements of rugby, basketball, and handball. Teams are mixed, with male and female athletes having some degree of paralysis.
The sport made its Paralympic debut at Sydney 2000, and since then, the gold medal has been won twice by the USA, twice by Australia, and once by Great Britain, who prevailed at Tokyo 2020.
Five stories to follow…
GB go again
Great Britain has participated in every Paralympics wheelchair rugby competition since it was introduced to the games – but in finishing sixth, fifth fourth twice, had never made the podium before their moment came in Tokyo. They beat USA 54-49 in a dramatic game at the Yoyogi National Stadium, to become the first European winners of the Paralympics.
“We haven’t beaten USA in a major tournament before, we haven’t beaten Japan in a major tournament for a long time and we haven’t beaten Canada in a major tournament, so to beat all of those teams was huge for us,” said top scorer Jim Roberts after the final.
But GB have now lost their element of surprise: they will enter Paris 2024 as one of the favourites, and the traditional big nations will be out for revenge.
USA look to re-establish dominance
The USA have been this sport’s most dominant team – winning six medals in total at Paralympics (three gold, two silver and two bronze – as well as winning the gold when it was a demonstration sport at Atlanta 1996).
They will be seeking to avenge defeat in the Tokyo 2020 final – particularly new coach Joe Delagrave, who was in that team. “I loved being able to mentor and to lead and to coach when I was captain,” he said. “I had support from a lot of my former peers that I am coaching now, so that was really important.”
“For me, my strength is that I’m going to let the guys know when I fail and mess up. And whatever I say isn’t the final word, it has to be a conversation. Hopefully, that starts a good fire with your culture and everyone doing that.”
Steelers set sights on podium
The Australian Steelers won the gold medal at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Qualification Tournament in Wellington, defeating Canada with a dramatic last minute score to prevail 49-48.
Captain Chris Bond scored with 1.8 second left on the clock, and reckons it is the perfect Para preparation. “That was exactly the game we needed at this time. You can’t replicate overtime games and pressure situations against the best teams. So to get the win was the icing on the cake,” Bond said.
Coach Brad Dubberley added: “This Paralympics is going to be one of the closest in history so playing in a final, playing in overtime and getting a win like that is huge for us.”
Female participation on increase
As a mixed sport, male and female Paralympians compete together as part of wheelchair rugby. The sport is male-dominated at the highest level, but several trailblazing women are helping to break down barriers.
Kylie Grimes was part of the gold-medal winning GB team for Tokyo 2020, and at the 2022 World Championships, she found more and more female players playing for top teams (13 in total). “I was trying to add up all the female players. I was like, ‘This is amazing. There’s even more than I thought’,” Grimes said. Expect women to play their part this time around, too.
Home side want to fulfil potential
France’s team demonstrated their elite abilities in both 2022 and 2023, defeating Paralympic champions Great Britain in two European Finals. Now, with a showpiece event on home soil, they are gunning for their first Paralympic medal.
“Our goal is to be among the best in the world by winning our first medal - to seek the most beautiful medal, at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games,” said team captain Jonathan Hivernat. “As captain, I want to lead this team until the end and enjoy a unique moment that happens only once in our lifetime.”