Performance trends in Paralympic athletes in sprint, middle-distance and endurance events

In recent decades the participation in Paralympic sports has grown exponentially, with an increasing number of countries and athletes attending to these events. However, despite the tremendous growth, only a few studies involving the performance of Paralympic athletes have been published to date. We aimed to investigate and compare the performance trends of men and women in category T54 from sprint, middle-distance and endurance events in Paralympic international events held from 2009 to 2018. Data were extracted from the publicly available IPC database (https://www.paralympic.org/). The male and female athletes in the Paralympic category T54 of the sprints, middle distance and endurance made up the sample. Final analysis included a total of 2097 men and 940 women (n=3037). The comparison between men and women showed statistical differences in performance with men being faster in all sprint and middle-distance events (p<0.05). For the endurance events, men are faster in 5000 m, half marathon and marathon (p<0.05), but there is no statistical difference between men and women in the 10,000 m event (p>0.05). Linear regression showed differences between men and women in the performance trends from 2009 to 2018 in the sprint, middle-distance and endurance events (p<0.05). In conclusion, men are faster than women in sprint, middle-distance and endurance Paralympic athletics events. In spite of performance has not improved over the last decade, the performance is distinctly correlated with age in the sprint and middle-distance events (younger and faster) and endurance events (older and faster).