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.
Latest News
- 2025 Paracanoe bulletin
- Upper Limb Illustrated Guide to Classification - Published in November 2023
Resources
- Latest information - classification, development and more
- Classification Committee
- Paracanoe Rules
- Competition results
- Development of Paracanoe & other resources
Classification
- ATHLETE MASTERLIST - updated 07 July 2025
- General information on Classification (including forms and manuals)
- Classification Upload Platform
- ICF Classification Rules and Regulations for Paracanoe
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:
| Language | Introduction to Paracanoe | Introduction to Classification |
| English | ||
| Spanish | ||
| French | ||
| Portuguese | Introducao paracanoagem | Introducao a classificacao |
| Russian | Paracanoe Introduction (Russian) | Classification introduction (Russian) |
| German | Paracanoe Introduction (German) | Classification introduction (German) |
| Arabic | Paracanoe introduction (arabic) | Classification introduction (arabic) |
| Italian | Paracanoa introduzione | Classificazioni introduzione |
| Hungarian | Paracanoe introduction (hungarian) | Classification introduction (hungarian) |
| Japanese | Paracanoe introduction (japanese) | Classification introduction (arabic) |
| Polish | Classification introduction (polish) | |
| Persian | Paracanoe introduction (persian) | Classification introduction (persian) |
Additional Information
