Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis in Paris in 2024: Today’s Google Doodle

Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis in Paris in 2024: Today’s Google Doodle

Have you seen what the Google search results from yesterday and today showed you? Two birds, one blue and the other brown were pictured in the most recent Google Doodle playing wheelchair tennis at the Jardin des Tuileries in France. And these birds were really pretty alive. This animated cartoon, which honored the wheelchair tennis competition now taking place at the Paris Paralympics 2024, featured birds using their rackets to strike the ball back and forth.

One of the wheelchair sports with the fastest global growth is wheelchair tennis. Wheelchair tennis’s steady rise in popularity over the past 50 years since it was initially recognized as an official sport has demonstrated that tennis is not just for birds. It’s also not exclusive to those with particular ability. It’s grown to be a more inclusive sport that can be enjoyed by individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and circumstances.

Many people all throughout the world have found great inspiration in all of this. “Ace attitudes and stellar serves” is a perfect caption for the Google Doodle page that appears beneath the animation. Today is the first day of wheelchair tennis at Stade Roland-Garros! It’s also not necessary to be an expert tennis player to understand that the French Open is held annually at Roland Garros Stadium, which is home to the renowned red clay courts. Here, through September 7, the wheelchair tennis competitions from the 2024 Summer Paralympics will take place.

Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis in Paris in 2024: Today’s Google Doodle

With little to no change in court dimensions, the competitions are held on the same surfaces as the 2024 French Open this past spring. Tennis balls and rackets are likewise used by players in the same ways. The center height of the net that runs across the middle of each court is 0.914 meters, or three feet. The athletes are also in wheelchairs.

The only significant exception to the rules is the “two-bounce rule”. Unlike traditional tennis, where a player must hit the ball back over the net before it bounces twice on his or her side, wheelchair tennis permits a player to let the ball bounce up to twice. The extra allowed bounce explains why it’s quite a feat to have to maneuver the wheelchairs as deftly as they do across the court.

The 2022 U.S. Open Wheelchair Tennis Championships for Forbes back in September 2022. I also discussed how the sport basically got its start when American Brad Parks was paralyzed from the hips down in a skiing accident in 1976. Parks and Jeff Minnebraker battled uphill for a time to get the sport off the ground and overcome impediments like inertia and other things that can prevent individuals from doing creative work.

But eventually, the game hit four home runs and grand slams, to be exact. The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships, and U.S. Open now feature the sport as a core component. Furthermore, the Wheelchair Tennis Tour of the International Tennis Federation has grown to include over 150 events.

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Additionally, the sport has established itself at the Paralympics. In fact, the first nation in Europe to have an official wheelchair program in the 1980s was France. The sport was first introduced to the Paralympics in 1992 in Spain, a European nation, notably in Barcelona. The wheelchair tennis competition at the Paralympics has expanded ever since.

Star-studded wheelchair tennis competitions at the Paralympics are back this year. The men’s Open singles category features several notable players, including the British Alfie Hewett, the Spanish Martin De La Puente, the Argentine Gustavo Fernandez, and the Japanese Todiko Oda. When it comes to wheelchair tennis, Oda is the clear successor in Japan to the renowned Shingo Kunieda, a frequent topic of discussion as the greatest wheelchair tennis player of all time.

Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis in Paris in 2024

Speaking of GOATs, Diede de Groot of the Netherlands defeated Luoyao Gao of China in a straight set today, September 3, to advance to the women’s Open singles draw semifinals. Given that de Groot has somewhat dominated the sport in recent years, that wasn’t all that shocking. She has completed a Grand Slam, which entails winning all four Grand Slam championships in a single year, not once, not twice, but three times between 2021 and 2023. It’s impressive to watch de Groot add to her GOATish credentials each time she competes in a big tournament.

So, if you haven’t already, you might want to give wheelchair tennis a try if you’re looking for a sport to watch that is both entertaining and motivational. Much of the movement and strategy found in all forms of tennis are present in this sport. However, it also features athletes who have overcome hardship and are skilled in ways you might not be familiar with when maneuvering around their wheelchairs.