The 2024 Paralympics begin in Paris this week. Here’s what to know about goalball and boccia, two uniquely Paralympic sports.

The 2024 Paralympics kick off in Paris this week, where over 4,000 athletes will compete across 22 events.

While many of the games will look familiar to those who followed the Olympics in the French capital earlier this summer, such as wheelchair basketball, cycling track and table tennis, there are two sports that are unique to the Paralympics: goalball and boccia.

Here’s what you need to know about both.

What is goalball?

Goalball is a game played by visually impaired athletes. It was originally created in 1946 to help rehabilitate veterans who’d lost their vision in World War II. The sport was officially added to the Paralympics in 1976 for men and in 1984 for women.

In order to play, athletes must be considered legally blind — which means they have less than 10% of their vision.

Each team starts with three players on the floor and a maximum of three substitutes on the sidelines. The offense tries to roll the ball past the defenders and into the net, which is 18 meters by 9 meters (roughly 59 feet by 29.5 feet). Since the players can’t see, the rubber ball at the center of the game contains bells, allowing the players to follow the sound of the ball in order to try to stop it from reaching the net.

The arena is required to be quiet during play so players can hear the ball and position themselves to defend the goal.

Each match is 24 minutes long, with two 12-minute halves and a three-minute break in between. However, the match can end early if a team leads by 10 goals at any point.

At the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, Brazil won gold on the men’s side and Turkey won gold for the women.

What is boccia?

Boccia was originally created for athletes with cerebral palsy, but it has been expanded to include those with other disabilities. It was first added to the lineup at the 1984 Paralympics in New York. While boccia doesn’t have an Olympic counterpart, it is comparable to bocce — with just a few differences.

One of the main distinctions between the two is that boccia is played indoors and bocce is an outdoor sport. Also, the floor in boccia is shorter and wider than a bocce court.

The point of the game is to get your ball as close as possible to a white target ball, which is called a jack. All other balls in the game are normally colored.

The length of the game is structured by ends, which are a series of six ball throws. In individual (one person per side) and pair matchups (two people per team), each side gets four ends. Yet team matches, which have three people per side, get six ends per side. After each end, whichever team has the most balls closest to the jack gets the point for the end. An additional point is also awarded for every ball that lands closer to the jack than that of the opposition.

Between the individual, pair and group boccia matchups, there will be matches for every Paralympic day, except for the final three days.