- The U.S. Paralympic Marathon team will be selected at the 2020 Boston Marathon Running Shoes - Gear.
- will take place on April 20.
- The 124th Boston Marathon will take place on April 20.
The Boston Marathon will host the U.S. Paralympic Marathon Team Trials to send athletes to the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, the Boston Athletics Association (B.A.A.) announced Wednesday.
There will be two divisions of para-athlete competitors who will be eligible for spots on Team USA: T11, T12, and T13 (athletes with a visual impairment), and T45 and T46 (athletes with an upper limb impairment). The top two men and women in these divisions who meet the U.S. Paralympic Track & Field qualifying standards in select ambulatory classifications will be nominated to the U.S. Paralympic team heading to Tokyo between August 25 and September 6.
“The B.A.A. is honored to host the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials Marathon for ambulatory Para athletes,” Marla Runyan, two-time U.S. olympian and Paralympian and para-athlete manager for the B.A.A., said in a press release. “The Boston Marathon has long been a race where Para athletes come to compete and showcase their athletic excellence. The road to the Tokyo Paralympic Games comes through Boston, and we couldn’t be more proud.”
The marathon itself, which will take place on April 20, is also taking steps to improve its own Para Athletics Divisions and Adaptive Programs for the 2020 race. Outside of the trials, the B.A.A. will offer prize money and awards to ambulatory athletes in three categories: T11, T12, and T13, T45 and T46, and prosthesis T61 through T64 (athletes with leg impairments).
A total of $16,500 will be distributed equally to the top three male and female finishers in each of these three classifications.
“We are very excited for the Boston Marathon to serve as our U.S. Paralympic Team Trials for our ambulatory marathon athletes,” Julie Dussliere, chief of Paralympic sport for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, said in a press release. “With Boston’s commitment to Para athletes and storied history with the marathon, we know our athletes will have a world-class experience as they look to punch their tickets to Tokyo.”
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for the Tokyo Paralympics, which used the Chicago Marathon’s wheelchair division in October to select members of its wheelchair marathon team for the upcoming Paralympics. At that race, three Americans—Daniel Romanchuk, Tatyana McFadden, and Susannah Scaroni—made the team bound for Tokyo as the first Americans across the line with an A-qualifier heading into the race.
In addition, the Paralympic track trials will be held from June 25 to 28 in Minneapolis.
Running in the Cold Runner’s World and Bicycling, and he specializes in writing and editing human interest pieces while also covering health, wellness, gear, and fitness for the brand. His work has previously been published in Men’s Health.
