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Para World Championships start Thursday in Dubai

Watch the action in Dubai, which starts at half past midnight Thursday/Friday on cbcsports.ca

The Para World Championships start tomorrow in Dubai, and Canada has high hopes for some hardware. Two years ago in London, wheelchair racer Brent Lakatos brought home four gold medals, bringing his world titles to 11, and contributing to nine medals overall for Canada. You can follow the action on cbcsports.ca, starting Thursday night at 12:25 a.m. ET. Here’s the schedule.

In Para athletics, wheelchair racing has seven classifications according to the degree of limitation resulting from an athlete’s impairment. For example, T32-T34 and T35-T38 refer to co-ordination impairments including hypertonia, ataxia and athetosis (involuntary movement of the muscles). T51 to T54 refers to limb deficiency, leg length difference, limited muscle power or range of movement. For more information on athlete classification, click here.

Canadians to watch

Brent Lakatos–T53 400m

Ilana Dupont–this is the fifth para world championships for the Team Canada co-captain, two-time Paralympian and Canadian T53 100m record-holder, who won the title at Canadian nationals in Montreal this year and who won bronze in 2013

Diane Roy–T54 5,000m

Guillaume Ouellet–T13 3,000m

Liam Stanley–T37 400m

Ilana Dupont

Nate Riech–T38 1,500m

Marissa Papaconstantinou–T64 100m

Zachary Gingras–T38 400m

The full schedule is available here.

RELATED: Decision to move Olympic marathon from Tokyo to Sapporo draws criticism

In other Para news, the International Paralympic Committee announced last week that unlike the Olympic marathons, which have been moved from Tokyo to Sapporo, the Paralympic marathon, scheduled for September 8, 2020 (the final day of competition) will “likely” remain in Tokyo alongside the other Para events. The date is a month later than the Olympic marathon, when temperatures and humidity are anticipated to be significantly lower. The Olympic endurance events are to be held in Sapporo, 800 kilometres from Tokyo, it was announced recently–a move that has been roundly criticized by local officials in Tokyo and by athletes like Canada’s 50K race walk world bronze medallist, Evan Dunfee, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the decision.

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