From the mass congregation of the world’s best athletes to nail-biting competitions held in iconic venues, the Paralympics mirror the Olympics in a bunch of ways. But there are a few key differences. One prime example: The sport of goalball, which is completely unique to the Paralympic Games. In fact, it’s one of just two Paralympic sports that doesn’t have an Olympic counterpart.
If you’re not familiar with goalball, well, now’s the time to get schooled. From its origin story to all the must-know rules to why athletes wear those special goggles and more, here’s your beginner’s guide to this intense, fast-paced sport.
What kind of sport is goalball?
Goalball is a team sport, and the, um, goal of it is to get your team’s ball into a net past your opponents to score points. Unlike most other team sports, though, silence is required in the venue while play is in progress. That’s important, since the balls contain bells inside; athletes use their ear-hand coordination to block the shots, so they have to be able to hear clearly what’s going on. The sport is played exclusively by athletes with vision impairments.
So what’s the history of goalball?
There’s a pretty cool backstory behind this sport. It dates back nearly eight decades—to 1946, to be precise—when Hanz Lorenzen of Austria and Sepp Reindle of Germany developed it as a way to help rehab soldiers who were blinded in war. In the following years, as players honed their skills, goalball became a more competitive sport.
It made its Paralympic debut as a “demonstration sport” at the 1972 Games in Heidelberg (basically, it was played at those Games, but didn’t yet have a secured spot at future Paralympics) and was then officially added to the program at the 1976 Toronto Games.
Two years after that, the first goalball World Championships were held in Voecklamarkt, Austria. Just men participated in those first competitions. Women’s goalball took to the global stage with the 1982 World Championships in Indianapolis, Indiana, and in 1984, women’s goalball debuted at the Paralympic Games in New York.
In the years since, goalball has expanded its footprint even more, with competitions hosted in countries around the world—including Brazil, China, and Algeria, to name a few—plus a biannual youth edition of the World Championships that kicked off in 2005.
Okay, walk me through how goalball is played.
Goalball is unlike any other sport and has its own set of rules and regulations. Like we mentioned, the athletes must be visually impaired, though the degree varies (which is where the black-out masks come in—more on those in a minute). The game pits two teams of six against each other, with three members from each team playing at a time.
A goalball match is just 24 minutes long, broken up into two 12-minute halves. It all takes place on a court that’s 18 meters long (about 59 feet) and 9 meters wide (nearly 30 feet) with raised markings on the floor to help the players orient themselves. There’s a massive goal on each end that spans the entire court width, and the objective is to net the ball—which weighs nearly three pounds and includes bells inside to help athletes detect its location—into your opponents’ goal.
When a team is in the “attacking position,” they throw the ball across the court, trying to aim it for the goal. But they have to toss it a certain way to count—basically, it has to bounce once on their side of the court and then bounce in the neutral area (the center portion of the court). Throws that don’t meet this criteria are considered a foul. The result? A penalty for the attacking team—and a chance for their opponents to score. They get to throw the ball at the other’s goal, and only one player is allowed to defend the net, which they do by blocking the ball with their body. Because the goal is so big, this often means athletes are literally diving onto the floor to stop the ball from going in. If they succeed, they’re given 10 seconds to then return the attack.
All in all, goalball is a really intense sport. At the elite level, players throw the ball at super fast speeds—upward of 40 miles per hour, Jake Czechowski, former head coach of US Women's Goalball, told SELF in 2019. And the sport requires a combination of a bunch of different athletic skills, including quick reaction time, strength, power, speed, flexibility, spatial awareness, and mental toughness.
So what exactly is going on with those black-out goggles?
One of the most striking features of goalball is visible right when you first flick on a match: the presence of large, black-out goggles that take up nearly half of the athletes’ faces. Everyone on the team must wear this piece of gear, and for good reason: While all goalball athletes are visually impaired, their levels of impairment are different. So to even out the playing field, everyone dons black-out eye masks. That way, no one is able to see more or less than someone else. It’s all in the name of fairness!
What does it take to win goalball?
This one’s pretty straightforward: The team that scores the most goals, or that pulls ahead by 10 points, is crowned winner of the match. At the 2024 Paralympics, teams will play in a tournament-style competition over the course of a week to determine the ultimate champ.
Who are the goalball athletes to watch at the 2024 Games?
Eight men’s teams and eight women’s teams will compete in the upcoming 2024 Games for their shot at Paralympic hardware, so there are plenty of athletes to follow. If you’re watching for Team USA, just know there are only athletes on the men’s side; the American women weren’t selected in the draw for this year’s Paralympics.
Back in April, the Paralympics organization highlighted nine athletes to watch. They include one American—men’s player Christian King, who netted six goals in eight games to lead Team USA to a silver medal at the the 2022 Americas Championships—as well as Sevda Altunoluk of Turkey, the top women’s scorer from the Tokyo 2020 Games and two-time Paralympic gold medalist; Josemarcio Sousa of Brazil, a reigning men’s Paralympic champion and two-time world champion; and Norika Hagiwara of Japan, a bronze medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Games and silver medalist at the 2023 World Games.
When (and how) can I watch goalball?
Goalball competitions at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games will take place from Thursday, August 29 through Thursday, September 5, with the medals being awarded that last day.
You can stream goalball—plus the 21 other Paralympic sporting events–via Peacock, as SELF previously reported. So cue up your TV (or device of choice) and get ready for all the high-octane action!
SELF is your go-to source for all things Paralympics. Follow our coverage of the Paris Games here.
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