IPC Athletics Announces Slot Allocations for London 2012
Record number of National Paralympic Committees will contest 170 medal events at the Games. 01 Jun 2012“It shows the growing strength and depth of the sport that a record 101 National Paralympic Committees will have athletes competing in track and field events at London 2012.
“This is further underlined by the fact that we had 1,782 athletes who had achieved the A Qualification Standard for the Games, despite us only having 1,100 slots available."
A record 101 National Paralympic Committees (NPC) will have athletes taking part in track and field events at London 2012 after IPC Athletics, the international governing body of para-athletics, today (1 June) announced its slot allocation for the Paralympic Games.
In London a total of 1,100 athletes (740 male and 360 female) will compete in 170 medal events starting on 30 August and finishing on 9 September with the marathon which finishes in front of Buckingham Palace on The Mall.
China, who topped the medals table at last year’s IPC Athletics World Championships, will have the biggest delegation after it was awarded 80 slots, the maximum number an NPC could be awarded. This is followed by USA with 54 slots, Russia 53, whilst host nation Great Britain has been granted 52 slots.
Ed Warner, Chair of the IPC Athletics Sport Technical Committee, said: “It shows the growing strength and depth of the sport that a record 101 National Paralympic Committees will have athletes competing in track and field events at London 2012.
“This is further underlined by the fact that we had 1,782 athletes who had achieved the A Qualification Standard for the Games, despite us only having 1,100 slots available.
“As a result we had to rely on the London 2012 Paralympic Games Qualification Guide, published in January 2010, to determine how many slots each country received."
The first 239 slots (146 male and 93 female) for London were allocated to National Paralympic Committees whose athletes had placed first or second in any of the individual medal events on the London 2012 Paralympic Games programme at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships.
A further 830 slots were allocated via the AQS Allocation Method which is based on results from IPC Recognized competitions which took place between 1 December 2010 and 20 May 2012.
Finally, the remaining 31 slots have been reserved for Bipartite Invitation Qualification Slots, places awarded to top athletes who have not had the chance to qualify for London 2012. So far there have been more than 200 applications for these slots ahead of the 4 June deadline.
Of the 170 track medal events in London, there are 103 for male athletes and 67 for females.
The London 2012 Paralympic Games will be the biggest ever with a record 4,200 athletes from 165 countries competing in 20 sports.
For a full breakdown of the IPC Athletics Slot Allocation for London 2012, please click on the link to the left hand side.