In all there will be 177 track and field events at the next Paralympic Games rising from 170 at last year's Games and the split will see 95 events for men and 82 for women, which is up from 67.

Athletics is one of 22 sports that will form the Rio 2016 Paralympic sports programme, which includes the Games debuts of canoe and triathlon, and will see around 4,350 athletes compete in 526 medal events.

A better spectrum of athletics disciplines will be offered within the programme including short, middle distance and long distance running events, jumps and throwing events, and will also see the number of medal events for athletes with high support needs increase by 22 per cent from the 45 that took place in London to 55 in Rio.


The new programme for Rio was developed following an analysis by IPC Athletics of the number of athletes, regions and countries participating in each event, and each National Paralympic Committee (NPC) was then asked to complete a survey.

In all 28 NPCs returned completed surveys, and during the 2012 Games NPCs provided feedback on two draft versions of the programme before a final draft was presented at last December's IPC Athletics Sport Forum in Frankfurt.

The final programme, which also aims to separate classification groups, particularly in field events which use the Raza coefficient points system first introduced in 2010, was then signed off by the IPC Governing Board.


"Our aim in announcing the medals programme more than three years prior to the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games is to give countries and athletes plenty of time in advance to plan their road to Rio," said Ed Warner, chairman of the IPC Athletics Technical Committee. 

"Over the last 12 months, IPC Athletics has established its major competition pathway, which includes regional and World Championships, IPC Athletics Grand Prix, Marathon World Cup and multiple approved competitions.

"Through creating more competition opportunities we want to develop more athletes across more classes and, in turn, create a greater competitive field for each class.

"The Rio programme has greater gender equality, has a greater spectrum of events for classes and will help develop the sport alongside National Paralympic Committee athlete and education development."

However, one event that has been removed from the Rio 2016 programme is the F42 discus and javelin, which has led to a furious reaction from Britain's Paralympic discus gold medallist from London 2012, Aled Davies.

Reacting to the news on Twitter, the 22-year-old F42 world discus champion said: "So the event list is out for Rio. I'm absolutely gutted I won't be able to defend my discus title," he tweeted.

"Constantly preaching legacy, when the event I live for is taken out of the Paralympic Games.... Devastated."

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