Your Paralympics preview 🦾

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The 2020 Olympics—and this newsletter’s run—may be over, but there’s plenty more action to look forward to with the start of the Paralympic Games on Aug. 24. Please let us know what you liked about this email by taking a quick survey. Maybe we’ll do more!

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Highlight reel

• The US women pushed their country’s gold medal count past China’s, as Team USA took its first-ever gold in women’s volleyball (defeating Brazil) and its seventh straight gold in women’s basketball (defeating Japan).
• India got its first ever track-and-field gold. Neeraj Chopra topped the men’s javelin competition—and has already been offered a reported $2 million in cash bonuses and prizes from companies and government agencies back home.
• Allyson Felix became the most decorated American track-and-field athlete in Olympic history, earning her 11th medal—gold in the women’s 4×400 meter relay.
• Uzbekistan’s Bakhodir Jalolov won his super-heavyweight boxing match against American Richard Torrez, extending Team USA’s long hunt for men’s boxing gold.
• The closing ceremony included the transfer of the Olympic flag to Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, whose city will host the games in 2024.

Blade runners

In 1964, when Paralympians first raced each other, men and women competed in the wheelchair dash. Those Games were in Tokyo as well, but the contrast in equipment between those dashes and the Paralympic contests this year could not be more stark. And athletes owe it all to the cheetah.

Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, if you didn’t want to use a wheelchair, your only option for a prosthesis was the rigid, clumsy kind modeled after human legs. They weren’t exactly made for sprinting. Then, in the early 1980s, a biomedical engineer named Van Phillips, inspired by the springy, powerful hind leg of the cheetah, invented the Flex-Foot—the forerunner of the blade-shaped prosthesis that runners and long jumpers at the Paralympics use today.

For the last three decades, the blades have been made of carbon fiber. Athletes now go to manufacturers like Össur and Ottobock to have their gait analyzed by computers, their prosthetic limbs custom-fitted to their bodies, and the precise alignment of these limbs fine-tuned with the help of lasers. On the horizon: 3D printing. “We are not using this technology to manufacture sports products yet,” said Christophe Lecomte, Össur’s director of biomechanical solutions, “but it has helped us greatly during development and design.”

The blade itself, though, has changed surprisingly little. It comes with soles for grip, and its strength is such that, during the landing on a long jump, it can withstand seven times a person’s body weight. But its essential shape and form remain unchanged. It has been hard to improve upon the cheetah. —Samanth Subramanian

By the digits

4,400: Athletes competing in the Tokyo Paralympics

539: Paralympic medal events

22: Sports Paralympians will compete in

1960: Year of the first Paralympic Games, in Rome; 400 athletes from 23 countries participated

11: Paralympic medals—including nine golds—won by Italy’s Maria Scutti at the 1960 Games, a record that still stands

55: Medals won by the US’ Trischa Zorn-Hudson in seven Paralympic appearances, the most of any athlete. This is more—a lot more—than the most decorated Olympic athlete, Michael Phelps.

What to watch for

Most Paralympic sports are ones you’ll recognize from the Olympics, although they may have modifications—such as taking place seated or in wheelchairs, or allowing guides for the vision impaired—to accommodate different types of athletes. Badminton and taekwondo were added to the Paralympic line-up for the first time in Tokyo.

There are also two events with no Olympic counterpart:

🔴 Boccia: Played exclusively by athletes with neurological impairments that impact their motor function, the object is to throw or roll colored balls as close as possible to the white target ball, or “jack.” Boccia is played by individuals, pairs, and teams.

🥅 Goalball: Tracing its roots to a post-World War II rehab program for blind veterans, goalball involves teams of three vision-impaired players trying to get the ball into a net (and prevent the opposing team from doing the same) that spans the entire width of the 9m (30 ft) court.

Quotable

“After we had to accept the decision by the Japanese authorities to have no spectators, I must admit we were concerned that these Olympic Games could become an Olympic Games without soul. But fortunately what we have seen here is totally different. Because the athletes gave these Olympic Games a great Olympic soul. From what I experienced at the Olympic Village and the competition sites, I must say that the atmosphere has been more intense than ever before.” —IOC president Thomas Bach. Japanese social media users have called Bach  “delusional.” 

A better way to pick a host city?

On the first day of competition in Tokyo, the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games of the 35th Olympiad in 2032 to Brisbane. It was symbolic of a new chapter of Olympic history, one that the IOC hopes will be cheaper for host cities, more transparent, less damaging for the environment—and could help the Games survive in the 21st century.

6: IOC officials who were expelled in 1999 after they accepted bribes to give the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City

52%: Percentage of Munich residents who said they didn’t want to host the 2022 Winter Games; the city ultimately withdrew its bid

80%: Decrease in the amount 2026 Winter Olympics candidate cities spent on their proposals compared to candidates for the two previous Games

>10%: New infrastructure host cities since 2017 commit to build for the Olympics

Instant replay

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🎵 This email was produced while listening to NBC’s Olympics closing credits soundtrack. We’ll miss u, bugles 😢

Our best wishes for an inspiring day. Get in touch with us at needtoknow@qz.com and live your best Quartz life by downloading our iOS app and becoming a member. Today’s email was brought to you by Heather Landy, Samanth Subramanian, Annabelle Timsit, and Liz Webber.