The Milano-Cortina Paralympics begin today. Here's what to know

The Milan-Cortina Paralympic overwinter Games officially start on fri with the gap observance at Verona Arena, the 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheatre that hosted the Olympic closing ceremony a couple weeks ago. Here are a few things to know about the 50th-anniversary edition of the Winter Paralympics:

Similar to last month's Winter Olympics, the Paralympics are being staged across a geographically widespread area in northern Italy. Cortina d'Ampezzo hosts the alpine skiing, snowboarding and wheelchair curling events while nordic skiing (the blanket name for cross-country and biathlon) takes place in Tesero. Milan's Santagiulia arena has been refitted for Para hockey, in which players get around the ice on bladed sleds, using two short hockey sticks with picks on the butt end to propel themselves.

With only six sports on the program, the Winter Paralympics are a lot more compact than the Olympics. Among the sports you won't see here are figure skating, speed skating, freestyle skiing and the sliding sports (bobsleigh, skeleton and luge), and there are just nine days of medal events, compared to 16 at the Olympics. These Games will feature 665 athletes and 79 sets of medals, which are both all-time highs for the Winter Paralympics but still sit well below the Olympics' 2,900 athletes and 116 medal events.

Sixty-eight of the 79 Paralympic medal events are in the various skiing disciplines, which each include a standing, sitting and visually impaired category for both men and women. Another eight sets of medals will be awarded in snowboarding, where athletes are classified according to physical impairment.

Wheelchair curling now offers two medal opportunities as mixed doubles makes its Paralympic debut. Canada did not qualify for the new event, but it still has an entry in the traditional four-player mixed game, where each team must include at least one woman.

Para hockey is technically mixed, but female players are rare. The Canadian women's national team is among those asking for separate women's and men's tournaments at the 2030 Games.

In 2022, the International Paralympic Committee caused a stir when it broke with the global consensus by not immediately expelling athletes from Russia and its military ally Belarus from the Beijing Winter Games in response to the recently launched invasion of Ukraine. The decision to allow them to compete under a "neutral" banner came amid fears of legal and logistical challenges as many Russian and Belarusian athletes were already in Beijing when various other worldwide governing bodies began banning them from competition.

Met with considerable backlash, the IPC reversed course the very next day, issuing an outright ban on all athletes from Russia and Belarus and kicking them out just prior to the opening ceremony.

Four years later, the IPC is under fire again after inviting 10 athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete in Milan-Cortina — not as neutrals, as was the case for a handful of athletes at last month's Olympics, but with their full national regalia, including flags and anthems. In response, Ukraine is boycotting the opening ceremony, and several other countries have joined them.

The Canadian Paralympic Committee voted against reinstating Russia and Belarus and is not sending any athletes to the ceremony. But the CPC said this was a "performance-based" decision based on Verona being at least two hours away from the venues where athletes are staying and competing.

Getting ready for the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics with Devin Heroux

That's about the same size as the squad that won 25 medals, including eight gold, at the 2022 Winter Paralympics in Beijing. Canada finished third in the medal standings behind host China (18 gold, 61 total) and Ukraine (11 gold, 29 total).

The key returnees include nordic stars Natalie Wilkie and Mark Arendz. Wilkie won two individual gold and four medals overall in Beijing, while Arendz's four medals (including a solo gold) brought his career total to 12, tops on the current Canadian team. Wilkie owns seven Paralympic medals, while alpine skier Mollie Jepsen and nordic skier Collin Cameron have six apiece. Here's more on Wilkie, who's competing in her third Paralympics at the age of just 25.

The youngest member of the team is 18-year-old alpine skier Florence Carrier. The oldest is 63-year-old wheelchair curler Ina Forrest, who's going for her fifth consecutive Paralympic medal. She won back-to-back golds with skip Jim Armstrong's team in 2010 and 2014 before taking bronze at the last two Games under Mark Ideson, who's also back.

The most experienced Canadian is hockey player Greg Westlake, who's appearing in his sixth Paralympics. The 39-year-old forward debuted as a teenager in 2006 in Turin, where he helped Canada win the gold medal, and has now come full circle as the Games return to northern Italy two decades later. Westlake's team took silver at the last two Paralympics, losing to the United States in the final both times. The Americans have won four straight Paralympic golds and four of the last five world titles.

Canada's flag-bearers for the opening ceremony on Friday will be Wilkie and hockey captain Tyler McGregor, who's making his fourth Paralympic appearance. However, they'll be doing the honours remotely as they prepare to compete the following day.

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