Article 29 Aug 2024
Ross McLean
29 Aug 2024
Paris 2024 Paralympics
With just a day to go to the start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event, players are adding the finishing touches to their on-court preparations and wearing their national colours with pride.
Here is all you need to know – hopefully – ahead of the biggest wheelchair tennis event in 2024.
When does the Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event start?
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event runs for nine days from Friday 30 August until Saturday 7 September, a day before the Closing Ceremony.
Play starts at 12:00 local time for the first eight days of the event and 13:30 on the final day. Medal matches will begin to be played from Wednesday 4 September. Both the start times and tournament schedule are subject to change.
Visit the ITF’s dedicated Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event website for more detailed schedule and event information.
Who is playing, where can I find the draws?
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event will feature 95 players nominated by 28 nations.The final entry list is available here, although Australia’s Heath Davidson has withdrawn due to personal reasons.
The draw for all six (men’s, women’s and quad singles and doubles) Paris 2024 Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis events took place on Tuesday 27 August. The draws can be found here.
Men's singles:48-player draw, all 16 seeds receive bye to second round
Women's singles:32-player draw, 8 seeds
Quad singles: 15-player draw, 1(of 4) seeds receives bye to quarter-finals
Men's doubles:20-team draw, 8 seeds and four further teams receive bye to second round
Women's doubles:13-team draw, 3 (of 4) seeded teams receive bye to quarter-finals
Quad doubles: 6-team draw, the two seeded teams receive byes to semi-final
All singles matches are played as best of 3 tiebreak sets; all doubles matches are played as best of 3 tiebreak sets with a match tiebreak as the final set.
Gold medal defences
Diede de Groot of Netherlands is the only singles champion from Tokyo 2020 who is competing at Paris 2024. Dylan Alcott and Shingo Kunieda, the Tokyo 2020 quad and men’s singles gold medallists respectively, have both retired.
De Groot and Aniek van Koot will defend their women’s doubles title by competing together. De Groot is bidding to become the third player to win the career Golden Slam in women’s doubles multiple times after Esther Vergeer and Van Koot.
Vergeer achieved the career Golden Slam three times over, while Van Koot has completed it twice over and is bidding to match Vergeer in achieving the feat three times over.
Sam Schorder and Niels Vink are another Dutch pair to have a career Golden Slam to their names. The duo won gold in quad doubles at Tokyo 2020 and will bid for further glory here.
Home favourite Stephane Houdet also won gold at Tokyo 2020, in the men’s doubles, and will compete again in Paris, albeit with a different partner. In Tokyo, he triumphed alongside Nicolas Peifer. Here, he competes with Frederic Cattaneo.
Past medallists
In total, 17 former Paralympic medallists are competing at Paris 2024 – seven in the men’s events (Frederic Cattaneo, Tom Egberink, Joachim Gerard, Alfie Hewett, Stephane Houdet, Gordon Reid and Maikel Scheffers), six in the women’s events (Diede de Groot, Yui Kamiji, Sakhorn Khanthasit, Momoko Ohtani, Lucy Shuker and Aniek van Koot) and four in the quad events (Andy Lapthorne, Sam Schroder, Niels Vink and David Wagner).
Potential storylines
Japan’s Tokito Oda has a fearsome record on clay having won back-to-back Roland Garros singles titles. If the 18-year-old tops the podium, he will become the youngest men's singles champion in Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis history.
Great Britain’s Alfie Hewett is aiming to become just the second player to complete the career Golden Slam in men’s wheelchair singles, after Shingo Kunieda.
Hewett and Reid are bidding to become the first doubles team to win a career Golden Slam in men’s wheelchair doubles. The duo have won seven of the last eight Grand Slam men’s doubles titles, including all three this year.
David Wagner of the United States will be hoping to win a ninth Paralympic medal. If he does, he will be the first player in Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis history to do so. With eight currently, he is level with Esther Vergeer at the top of the all-time list for medals.
Three players are contesting their sixth Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Event – Australia’s Ben Weekes, Wagner and Sakhorn Khanthasit, who will be contesting the men's, quad and women's events respectively.
Just four players have won medals in singles at a home Paralympics – Australia’s David Hall, USA’s Stephen Welch and Japan’s Shingo Kunieda and Yui Kamiji. France have eight players competing across all draws.
Paris 2024