There is a Paris that is “dismantling” the Games to prepare others. In short, it is not over. And fortunately, one might say. There is another Olympics ready to go, there are the Paralympics that will begin on Wednesday, August 28 and will last until Sunday, September 8. Two weeks that will give life to a great blockbuster, an extra time of the Games that have just ended that is increasingly attracting the attention of sports enthusiasts, communication and social media and that a few years ago was not even conceivable could happen. The Paralympics have become in all respects a great sporting event with the stories of the athletes, the challenges, the victories and defeats, with the medals won, with those lost and with the numbers that speak of an Italian delegation among the largest ever which is the sign of how Paralympic sport is no longer (or less and less) a sporadic practice, that it is the sign of a growing civic sense. As happened for the XXXIII Olympics, also for the XVII Paralympics the Italian Team will be present with a record delegation. There are 141 Italians (71 male and 70 female athletes) who will compete in 17 disciplines, athletics, badminton, canoeing, rowing, cycling, horse riding, judo, swimming, fencing, sitting volleyball, weightlifting, taekwondo, wheelchair tennis, table tennis, shooting, archery, triathlon. The flag bearers are Amber Sabatini (athletics) and Luke Mazzone (cycling). There are 52 athletes making their debut, approximately 37% of the Italian team. The youngest athlete is Juliana Chiara Philippi (athletics), born in 2005. The goal is to equal, if not improve, the 69 medals won three years ago in Tokyo, when Italy was in ninth place in the medal table. The goal is obviously the medals, but the goal is above all to change the perception of Paralympic sport in civil society, to intercept many other disabled boys and girls who have not yet discovered sport because they do not know how to get there, because they do not have the economic means, because they do not feel up to it. And that through the stories that will arrive from Paris they will be able to find the courage to take the first step, a challenge within a challenge because sport for those with a disability is one of the most effective tools for inclusion and integration regardless of whether they can then get to the Paralympics. And we must always remember the speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in which the President of the United States called for the disabled to be transformed from beneficiaries into taxpayers “because that way we will do good to us and to them…”