PARIS — More than 4,000 athletes from around the world will compete in 22 sports during the Paralympics from August 28 to September 8 in Paris. Here are a few:

Tatyana McFadden and Jessica Long are legends on the Paralympic stage.

McFadden, a wheelchair racer, and Long, a swimmer, will both compete in the Summer Olympics in France for the sixth time.

In 2014, McFadden even made an appearance at the Winter Paralympics in Sochi and dominated the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, winning six medals, including four gold. She was honored by the US Olympic Committee that year, winning the Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award at the Rio Paralympics for her outstanding performance and sportsmanship. She was also featured in “Rising Phoenix,” a Netflix film about the Paralympic movement.

McFadden competes in sprint and various distance events and will also defend her gold medal in the 4 x 100-meter universal relay. The event made its debut in Tokyo, where she was part of a team that set world records.

Long has won a whopping 29 medals, including eight gold, in swimming events since she was 12, becoming the youngest American on the U.S. team in Athens in 2004. And she’s made an impact on pop culture, too, as the subject of a Toyota Super Bowl commercial in 2021.

After the Paralympic swimming trials in Minneapolis, Long was one of 21 female swimmers selected for the 2024 U.S. team. In the run-up to Paris, she trained at the US Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

Football is his passion, but sprinting earned him a gold medal at the Paralympic Games.

At age 14, Nick Mayhugh was diagnosed with cerebral palsy: a “dead spot” on the right side of his brain that affects the mobility of the left side of his body.

Still, he never stopped competing. Mayhugh played Division I soccer at Radford University before representing the U.S. on the seven-on-seven national soccer team in 2017. In 2019, he helped win bronze at the Lima Parapan American Games with eight goals in six games.

But because football at the Paralympics is played between blind athletes, Mayhugh began training as a sprinter. He left Tokyo with three gold medals, one silver and the world records for his 100m and 200m finishes.

Now he will sprint again in the 100-meter and 400-meter races and Mayhugh will also try to win a medal for the first time in a new event: the long jump. The first time Mayhugh ever competed in the long jump in a major competition was at the Paralympic Trials in July. He won his classification with a leap of 6.19 meters (20 feet, 3.7 inches).

Italy’s Valentina Petrillo becomes the first transgender athlete to compete at the Paralympic Games.

In Paris, the 50-year-old runner will compete in the 200 meters and 400 meters in the women’s T-12 class for athletes with a visual impairment. At the age of 14, Petrillo was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease.

Between 2015 and 2018, Petrillo won 11 national titles in the men’s category, before making the switch in 2019. Last year, Petrillo won two bronze medals at the World Para Athletics Championships.

She sees participation in the Paralympic Games as a symbol of inclusivity in world sport.

With bronze in Rio and silver in Tokyo, Maximiliano Espinillo hopes to complete the set and win gold in Paris.

The Argentine footballer has been blind since the age of four due to a virus that causes retinal detachment.

Espinillo, Argentina’s star player, first competed at the Parapan American Games in Toronto in 2015, before making his Paralympic debut in Rio a year later.

During the ISBA Men’s Blind Football World Cup last summer, Argentina defeated China on penalties in the championship match. Espinillo was named MVP of the tournament.

The rivalry between Argentina and Brazil is fierce. Since blind football was introduced to the Paralympics in 2004, Brazil has won every gold medal and has never lost a Paralympic competition.

The two played in a group stage match at the Parapan American Games in Santiago last fall, where Espinillo’s lone goal was enough to defeat the sport’s powerhouse. Brazil eventually won the title, with Argentina finishing third. But it was still a step in the right direction for the Argentines, and perhaps a sign of things to come in Paris.

The Normandy native will defend his triathlon gold on home soil. Hanquinquant is the big favorite to win another gold medal. He is number 1 in the World Triathlon Para Rankings for the PTS4 classification and has already won three triathlons this year.

The six-time European and world champion had to have his right leg amputated just below the knee in 2013, after his right leg was crushed by a piece of agricultural machinery in an industrial accident three years earlier.

Before the accident, Hanquinquant was a multi-sport athlete and knew that wasn’t going to change. He wanted to challenge himself by training for the triathlon. In 2016, he won his first event, but that was after the qualification period for the Rio Games was over, so his Paralympic debut had to wait.

Participating in Tokyo was a milestone, but now, three years later, Hanquinquant will be one of the French flag bearers at the opening ceremony on Wednesday.

Since 1992, Sarah Storey has found glory at the Paralympics. The 2024 Games will be her ninth time representing Great Britain, but only her fifth as a cyclist.

Storey first appeared on the Paralympic stage as a swimmer, winning 16 medals across four Paralympic Games, but an ear infection in 2005 forced her to leave the water and take to a bike.

As a cyclist, she competes in time trials and road races. Storey currently has 12 gold medals in cycling. Add to that the five from swimming and those 17 gold and 28 medals in total and that makes her the most decorated Paralympic athlete from Great Britain.

In Tokyo she won gold in the pursuit, road race and time trial. In Paris she will defend all three titles.

Oksana Masters has won 17 medals in three Paralympic sports: cross-country skiing, rowing and cycling.

Adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine at age 7, Masters was born with congenital defects resulting from radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. At age 14, her legs were amputated above the knees.

Sports became a way to show her strength and power. The London 2012 Paralympics were the first time Masters represented the United States — Paris marks her seventh Paralympics. She has also competed in every Winter Games since 2014 as a Nordic skier.

In London, Masters won a bronze medal as a rower, but she hasn’t rowed since. While recovering from a back injury, she switched to cycling and has never looked back.

In her first races as a cyclist in Rio, Masters failed to reach the podium. But in Tokyo she took home two gold medals in the time trial and road race events that she will defend in Paris.

Lin Suiling has been on the China wheelchair basketball team since 2016 and was named captain in 2017. Rio was Lin’s first Paralympic Games and China failed to reach the podium.

In Tokyo, however, China won silver after losing 50-31 to the Netherlands in the gold medal match. It was, however, China’s first-ever medal in the sport. Lin is one of the few returning players from that team who will be aiming for gold in Paris.

In the run-up to the Paralympics, China has dominated tournaments. In January, the Asia-Oceania Wheelchair Basketball Championship won all six games for the title. The championship victory qualified the team directly for Paris, and Lin was named to the All-Star team as the tournament’s most valuable player.

The Netherlands still poses a major threat to China. At the 2022 World Cup, the Dutch defeated Lin and her team again, although it was the best performance China has ever delivered at that tournament.

Lin and her teammates are looking to take the final step towards gold, and Paris could be the stage where that happens.

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Amanda Vogt is a graduate student at the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

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AP Paralympic Games https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games