How do para archers qualify for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games?

The archery competitions at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will take place on 29 August to 5 September on the Esplanade de Invalides, where the Olympic tournament will also be held, in the centre of the French capital.

Nine gold medals will be awarded in men’s individual, women’s individual and mixed team events across three para competition categories: recurve, compound and W1.

Only 140 para archers can compete at the Games and spots must be won in competition during the qualification period, which starts at the 2023 World Archery Para Championships in Pilsen and will end with a final qualifier in Dubai in early 2024.

There will also be three dedicated continental qualification tournaments in Asia, Europe and the Americas, as well as a combined tournament for Africa and Oceania. France also receives a basic quota (one archer per category) as the host country of the Games.

Here’s how para archery can qualify for Paris 2024…

Categories

Archers at the Olympics only compete in one category (recurve) but archers at the Paralympics are split across three (recurve, compound and W1). The recurve and compound bowstyles mirror the able-bodied categories, while W1 includes the most impaired para athletes.

A fixed total of 140 para archers compete at the Paralympics but the number of spots available in each category differs as follows.

• Recurve men: 30
• Recurve women: 24
• Compound men: 32
• Compound women: 28
• W1 men: 13
• W1 women: 13

(The numbers are roughly proportional to category participation at the world championships.) 

The 75-65 quota split between genders in the archery competitions in Paris is the closest the event has been to parity in comparison to Tokyo 2020 (79-60) and Rio 2016 (79-59).

Phases

Archers do not qualify for the Paralympics directly but win quota places for their country. They must then participate in team selection processes, which decide which athletes represent a qualified nation at the Games.

Each country can win a maximum of two quota places in each competition category at the Games and most places are won in individual competition. (The only exception is the mixed team event at the world championships.)

There are three competition phases to the qualification procedure.

Phase 1: Primary qualifier

• World Archery Para Championships – 17-23 July 2023 – Pilsen, Czech Republic (78 places)

Phase 2: Continental qualifiers

• European qualifier (European Championships) – 10-20 August 2023 – Rotterdam, Netherlands (10 places)
• Americas qualifier (Para Pan Am Games) – 18-22 November 2023 – Santiago, Chile (10 places)
• Asian qualifier (Asian Championships) – 16-25 November 2023 – Bangkok, Thailand (10 places)
• African/Oceanian qualifier – 4 March 2024 – Dubai, UAE (6 places)

Phase 3: Final qualifier

• Final world qualification tournament – 5 March – Dubai, UAE (12 places)

The remaining spots are awarded to emerging para archery nations via universality invitations (8 places) issued in Spring-Summer 2024 or reserved for France as host country (6 places).

Primary qualifier

More than half of the quota places for the Paralympics are won at the 2023 World Archery Para Championships, taking place on 17-23 July in Pilsen, Czech Republic. The 78 spots will be awarded in three stages.

First, the countries that advance to the semifinals of the mixed team competitions will all receive one men’s and one women’s quota. The remaining 54 places will then be distributed on the final ranking of the individual competition.

Under international archery rules, only places one to eight are calculated for the final ranking. (All archers that are eliminated in the last-16 round of matchplay are ranked ninth and all archers eliminated in the last-32 round are ranked 17th.)

In case there is a situation where there it is not possible to assign places on the ranking – for example, there are five available quota spots but six eligible athletes ranked ninth – then a secondary tournament is used.

The eligible athletes (only) participate in another matchplay bracket to decide who wins the places.

Minimum standards

As well as being selected to fulfil a country’s quota place at the Paralympic Games, an archer must also reach a minimum performance standard to be eligible to compete in Paris.

This standard is defined as a certain score for the 72-arrow qualifying round. (A maximum of 720 points available.)

The minimum standards are as follows:

• Recurve men: 570
• Recurve women: 530
• Compound men: 650
• Compound women: 620
• W1 men: 590
• W1 women: 520

Athletes must hit or exceed the score at least once in internationally recognised competition between 1 July 2023 and 1 July 2024.