St. Louis 2022 World Para Powerlifting Parapan American Open Championships FAQs

The St. Louis 2022 World Para Powerlifting Parapan American Open Championships is just around the corner! Logan University is thrilled to welcome athletes and coaches from around the world to our Chesterfield campus. This event is free and open to the public, so we hope to see you there! Learn more about this weekend’s excitement below:

DETAILS:

• This will be the first time an international competition for the sport of Para powerlifting is hosted in the United States.

• The competition is open to athletes from all over the world and will include 20 individual medal events and one mixed team event.

• Pan American (North America, South America and Central America) athletes must participate in the St. Louis 2022 World Para Powerlifting Parapan American Open Championships to qualify for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

• Logan University is the High Performance Management Organization of USA Para Powerlifting. Logan’s Paralympic Operations Department manages all aspects of the sport, from serving as a site for competitions and coaching summits, to being a resource to USAPP athletes and their coaches. Members of USAPP have access to an array of Logan’s health care experts for chiropractic care, nutrition and biometric analysis, and sports rehabilitation, among other services.

About Para Powerlifting

• Powerlifting is one of the Paralympic Movement’s fastest growing sports in terms of participants and is now practiced in nearly 100 countries.

• The sport represents the ultimate test of upper body strength with athletes competing in the bench press discipline.

• Competitors must lower the bar to their chest, hold it motionless on the chest and then press it upwards to arms-length with locked elbows. Athletes are given three attempts, and the athlete who lifts the heaviest weight is declared the winner.

• Such is the strength of athletes competing in this sport that it is not uncommon to see a competitor lift more than three times their own body weight.

• World Para Powerlifting, under the governance of the International Paralympic Committee, acts as the international federation for the sport and is based in Bonn, Germany.

• Open to male and female athletes with eight eligible physical impairments, athletes compete in one sport class across 10 different weight categories per gender.

• Men compete in the 49kg, 54kg, 59kg, 65kg, 72kg, 80kg, 88kg, 97kg, 107kg and +107kg divisions.

• Women compete in the 41kg, 45kg, 50kg, 55kg, 61kg, 67kg, 73kg, 79kg, 86kg and +86kg divisions.

• Major competitions include the Paralympic Games which take place every four years, biennial World Championships, triennial regional Championships and annual World Cup and Grand Prix events.

Paralympic History

• Although weightlifting made its Paralympic debut at Tokyo 1964, it was not until the 1984 Games that powerlifting was first included as a Paralympic sport. At the 1984 Paralympics, the powerlifting competition featured 16 male athletes from six countries. Since its Paralympic debut, the sport has been included in every edition of the Games.

• Initially the sport of weightlifting only catered to male athletes with a spinal cord injury, but in the years that followed the sport began to include other impairment groups too.

• Weightlifting featured athletes performing a dead bench press, whereby the lift starts from the chest. Powerlifting on the other hand involves athletes receiving the bar at arms-length, lowering it to their chest until it is motionless, before pressing it back upwards evenly.

• By Sydney 2000, the year women were first allowed to compete in Paralympic powerlifting, the sport was widely practiced in all five continents.

For more information, please visit www.worldparapowerlifting.org. You can also follow World Para Powerlifting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

For further information about USA Para Powerlifting and the St. Louis 2022 World Para Powerlifting Parapan American Open Championships, please visit www.logan.edu/usapp/. You can also follow Logan University on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.