Like the Olympics, the Summer Paralympics are opting to forgo a stadium start and instead introduce the world to the athletes from a more intimate location in the city itself. Beginning Wednesday, August 28 at 1 p.m. ET, Paralympians will take to the streets of Paris’s famed Champs Élysées, a beautiful avenue that runs from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde.

The lighting of the Paralympic torch will take place at the end of the route, which is also open to fans and spectators. Team USA’s Steve Serio, a member of the Paralympic basketball team, and Nicky Nieves, a Paralympic volleyball player, will serve as flag bearers for the ceremony.

The system, which takes place before the Games begin, is intended to ensure that athletes of similar abilities are paired together. According to the official Olympic Games website, medical and technical experts will assess Paralympians to determine which sport category they should be placed in, according to “the degree and nature of their qualifying disabilities.”

Given the varied nature of the sports at the Games and the way they are played, there is no single classification system; instead, each discipline has its own separate classification. Classifications are demarcated by a letter, usually the first letter of a specific sport, followed by a number that usually corresponds to the severity of an athlete’s disability.

Chuck Aoki, a member of Team USA’s wheelchair rugby team, explained the Paralympic classification system to his Instagram followers in a post shared on Aug. 14. “The goal is… to have people of similar abilities compete against each other,” he said. “Visually impaired runners compete against other visually impaired runners. You wouldn’t have a visually impaired person compete against a wheelchair user because that would be chaos.”

Aoki, whose classification number is a 3, also noted that there are “a lot of nuances” to the system.

In a moment of extraordinary history, Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo will become the first transgender woman to compete at the Paralympics. The 50-year-old athlete, who has a degenerative visual disorder called Stargart disease, will run the 200- and 400-meter events as part of the T12 classification.

“Yes, I have problems with my vision, I am visually impaired, I am trans — and let’s say that is not the best thing in our Italy, being trans — but I am a happy person,” Petrillo told The Associated Press in Italian during an interview in a suburb of Bologna, Italy. “I started transitioning in 2019 and in 2020 I realized my dream, which was to race in the women’s category, to do the sport that I always loved,” she said. “I turned 50 before it came out … we all have the right to a second choice in life, a second chance.”

In another groundbreaking first, British actress Rose Ayling-Ellis is set to become the first deaf person to present live sports coverage on television when she takes over as the main presenter for Britain’s Channel 4. Ayling-Ellis, who previously starred in the BBC soap series “EastEnders,” told the outlet that the Paralympics are “a great opportunity to show people what we disabled people can do.”

She added that the event “breaks down people’s barriers to understanding what we are capable of,” but noted that disabled people “should not try to prove this to others.”

The Paralympic symbol — which was introduced in 2019 — consists of three elements in red, blue and green, representing commonly used colors in national flags around the world. The name “The Three Agitos” comes from a Latin term meaning “I move.” According to a post on the NBCOlympics Instagram page, “the symbol encircles a central point to symbolize movement and emphasizes the role of the Paralympic Movement in bringing together athletes from all corners of the world to compete.”

According to the IPC’s official website, The Three Agitos also “emphasize the fact that Paralympic athletes continually inspire and excite the world with their achievements: always moving forward and never giving up.”

• Para archery
• Para Athletics
• For Badminton
• Blind Football (soccer)
• Boccia
• Para canoe
• Para-cycling
• Para-equestrian sport
• Goal ball
• For Judo
• Para-powerlifting
• Para rowing
• Shooting Parasport
• Seated volleyball
• Para swimming
• Para Table Tennis
• For Taekwondo
• Para-triathlon
• Wheelchair basketball
• Wheelchair screens
• Wheelchair rugby
• Wheelchair tennis

Of the sports practiced at the Paralympic Games, only three are open to athletes with intellectual disabilities: para-athletics, para-swimming and para-table tennis.