This Year’s Nationals Set The Stage For The Rest Of 2024’s Packed Schedule

With just 175 days until the Paralympic Games Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony in August, the top U.S. Para track and field athletes are set to kick off the jam-packed season on home soil next week.

From March 15-17, the country’s top athletes will flock to Hilmer Lodge Stadium on the campus of Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, for the 2024 U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships presented by Toyota.

This year’s event carries unique significance as it not only begins the long journey to Paris, but it also serves as a qualifying event for the 2024 World Para Athletics Championships, set to take place May 17-25 in Kobe, Japan.

Typically the world championships are held in odd-numbered years to avoid conflict with the Paralympics, but both will take place over a four-month span this summer in the last major quirk of the pandemic shakeup of the sports calendar.

As part of that condensed schedule, the top America athletes will come together again on July 18-21 for the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials. A location has not yet been announced. The Paralympic Games then kick off on Aug. 28.

Last year’s U.S. meet — held at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center, about 130 miles south of Mt. SAC — also served as a world championships qualifier, with the top Americans going on to compete for world titles in Paris.

Athletes like Jaydin Blackwell, Breanna Clark, Ezra Frech, Noelle Malkamaki and Roderick Townsend, who all set world records in Paris, first had to earn their spots at nationals.

Don’t be surprised if some records fall during the three days in Walnut, either. Before setting a new mark of 13.32 meters in Paris, Malkamki broke the women’s shot put F46 world record at nationals with a toss of 12.63 meters. In 2022, Annie Carey’s long jump of 4.81 meters at the national championships set a new world record in the women’s T44 event.

But what the athletes will really be looking for this week are roster spots in Kobe.

In order to qualify for worlds, athletes have to hit a minimum entry standard time in their event. For example, in the men’s 100-meter T38 — a race in which U.S. sprinters Blackwell, Nick Mayhugh and Ryan Medrano all qualified for worlds last year — competitors must finish in under 12.50 seconds.

Competition will be tight at nationals, as only 30 U.S. athletes will make the worlds roster, which is reduced from the 45 that competed last year in Paris.  On top of the limited roster size, each medal event at worlds can only have a maximum of three athletes from one country in it.

Having a world championships in consecutive years is unprecedented, but this year’s crowded track and field schedule is due to the multiple postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The world championships in Kobe were originally scheduled to take place in September 2021 but had to be delayed a year to accommodate for the Tokyo Paralympics being pushed back. After being postponed to 2022, the Kobe competition’s organizers requested to delay it until 2024, once again citing safety concerns due to the pandemic.

The world championships will resume their traditional schedule of taking place in odd-numbered years beginning in 2025.

The three-day nationals competition at Mt. SAC will comprise of five sessions — morning and evening sessions on Friday and Saturday, and a morning session to conclude the meet on Sunday. Athletes will compete in a maximum of 120 medal events over the course of the three days.

You can see the full competition schedule here.

The entire event will be livestreamed on usparatf.org and on the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field Facebook page.

Recaps featuring the top results from that day’s events will also be posted on usparatf.org.

Luke Hanlon is a sportswriter and editor based in Minneapolis. He is a freelance contributor to usparatf.org courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.