World Para Athletics Championships is about to start in Dubai

Dubai, United Arab Emirates from November 7 to 15 will host the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships, held by the International Paralympic Committee.

There will be more than 1,400 athletes from 122 countries, who will fight for medals in 172 medal events. The Russian delegation will be 112 people - 79 athletes and 33 coaches. Compared to the previous World Championships, men's and women's relay races of 100m and 400m among athletes with physical and visual impairment were excluded from the competition program, but one new 4x100m Universal relay was included. The championship program is almost completely consistent with the upcoming Paralympic Games.

The flag bearer of the team will be 3-time Paralympic champion Margarita Goncharova.

The upcoming championship is the first competition in which Russian athletes will compete for direct quotas for participation in the 2020 Paralympic Summer Games in Tokyo, Japan. It is planned that up to 360 male and 288 female quotas will be raffled at the championship. Each athlete who takes place from 1 to 4 in the medal event of the program included in the Paralympic program will earn one quota for his nation, but if he gets into the top 4 in several types of program, the number of quotas is not cumulative.

The last 2017 World Championships in London was held without participation of the Russian national team. The last Para Athletics World Championship, in which Russian athletes took part, were the competitions in Doha, Qatar in 2015. Then 1230 athletes from 96 countries went to the start, who fought for 212 sets of medals. The Russian team won 24 gold, 26 silver and 18 bronze medals and became the second in the team medal counting.

Athletics is the first sport in the Paralympic Games program in terms of the number of medals and the number of participants. In total, at the 2020 Games, 1,100 athletes will fight for 168 sets of awards.