Staff USA has chosen sitting volleyball participant Nicky Nieves and wheelchair basketball participant Steve Serio as flagbearers for the 2024 Paris Paralympic video games.
The 2 athletes will lead Staff USA through the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, which takes place Wednesday, August 28. Each are returning gold medalists and can assist Staff USA defend gold medals in Paris.
Nieves, 34, can be competing in her second Paralympics after serving to the U.S. sitting volleyball crew to gold in 2016. Nieves was named to the preliminary roster for Tokyo in 2021, however examined constructive for COVID-19 and needed to miss the competitors. Staff USA sitting volleyball can be defending gold in Paris, and is aiming for a 3rd consecutive gold medal.
Serio, 37, is the captain of the U.S. males’s wheelchair basketball crew and can be a five-time Paralympian. He’s a three-time medalist, serving to Staff USA win gold in Rio and in Tokyo. Serio, who has stated that Paris can be his remaining Paralympic video games, will try to guide his crew to a 3rd consecutive gold medal, which might be a Paralympic first.
225 Staff USA athletes are in Paris for the 2024 Paralympics, with 141 being returning Paralympians. Paratriathlete Melissa Stockwell and wheelchair rugby participant Chuck Aoki, the Staff USA flagbearers in Tokyo, are each returning to Paris as effectively.
The Opening Ceremony will happen subsequent week alongside the Champs-Élysées and within the Place de la Concorde, a public sq. close to the Louvre. Just like the Olympic Opening Ceremony, the Paralympic opening occasion will make historical past as the primary to happen exterior of a stadium.
After the Opening Ceremony, the Paralympic Video games will happen from Aug. 29 to Sept. 8. In whole, the Video games will embrace 22 sports activities and 549 medal occasions.
