What is Paracanoe?

Paracanoe is the canoeing discipline for athletes with an impairment and races are contested by two types of boat, kayak (K) and va’a (V). The kayak is propelled by a double-blade paddle, while the va’a is an outrigger canoe which has an ama (second pontoon) as a support float and is used with a single-blade paddle. Both kayak and va’a have three different classes of event for men and women, depending on the classification of an athlete’s impairment, with KL1, KL2 and KL3 for kayak and VL1, VL2 and VL3 for va’a. At international level all Paracanoe races are individual events and competed at a distance of 200m.

Paracanoe began as an initiative by the International Canoe Federation (ICF) to allow athletes with an impairment to compete in the sport. The discipline featured with exhibition status under the name paddleability at the 2009 Canoe Sprint World Championships in Dartmouth, Canada, and was given official status as Paracanoe at the following year’s edition in Poznan, Poland. Later in 2010, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced at a meeting in Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, that Paracanoe would make its debut at the Paralympic Games in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. There were six medal events at the Games (three men, three women), all in the kayak category.

At the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, va'a made its Paralympic debut, with three medal events - two for men, one for women - taking to nine races overall on the Paracanoe programme. At Paris 2024, there will be an equal number of male and female events for the first time following the introduction of the women's VL3.

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      Introduction Material

      The ICF Paracanoe is running a series of webinars to help the countries with basic knowledge and tools to assist them in developing paracanoe in their region and to help with athlete classification.

      The ICF Paracanoe made available the material for such introduction in many languages, and encourage the countries to use it in order to make an introduction to paracanoe to their coaches, clubs, or any other stakeholders:

      LanguageIntroduction to Paracanoe Introduction to Classification
      English

      Paracanoe introduction

      Paracanoe - Classification introduction

      Spanish

      Introducción del Paracanotaje

      Introducción de la Clasificación

      French

      Paracanoe introduction (french)

      Classification introduction (french)

      PortugueseIntroducao paracanoagemIntroducao a classificacao
      RussianParacanoe Introduction (Russian)Classification introduction (Russian)
      GermanParacanoe Introduction (German)Classification introduction (German)
      ArabicParacanoe introduction (arabic)Classification introduction (arabic)
      ItalianParacanoa introduzioneClassificazioni introduzione
      HungarianParacanoe introduction (hungarian)Classification introduction (hungarian)
      JapaneseParacanoe introduction (japanese)Classification introduction (arabic)
      Polish Classification introduction (polish)
      PersianParacanoe introduction (persian)Classification introduction (persian)

       

      Additional Information

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      Upcoming Events

      2025 ICF PARACANOE WORLD CUP POZNAN POLAND
      22 - 25 Mayo 2025
      PLPoland
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      19 - 22 Junio 2025
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      20 - 24 Agosto 2025
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