Good morning, honourable Chair and committee members. Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide an update to you today, which will include a number of things: first, an update on the Rio Paralympics; second, a bit about our Team Canada preparations; and third, how we intend to tell the story and share it with all Canadians from coast to coast.
Before I start, I would like to acknowledge the continued strong leadership and financial support of the Government of Canada and the leadership and work of our National Sport Federations and performance partners such as Sport Canada, Own the Podium, and the Coaching Association of Canada as they support our athletes to compete in the games.
Now let's turn our attention to the deck that you all have in front of you. We will walk through it, and at least you will have a memory and some reminders of some of the information that we are going to share with you today. We will start with page 3.
The Rio Paralympics will be held from September 7 to September 18, and approximately 176 countries will be competing, with a total of 4,350 athletes. There will be 23 disciplines—that means 22 sports, and cycling has two disciplines—and there will be 11 days of competition. Most important for all of us to note is that there will be 528 medals to take away. That is what our focus is on, the 528, and second, the two new sports that have been added, triathlon and canoe, for both of which Canada will be providing athletes.
The next page speaks about Team Canada's composition. Currently, we are looking at about 155 to 160 athletes, and this also includes the guides. As Chris mentioned earlier, when you add all the support—the coaching, the medical personnel, the mission staff, and the admin staff, and a small village to make this effective and help support the athletes—our overall Team Canada size will be approximately 300 individuals.
Leading this large team will be none other than one of our most decorated Paralympic athletes, five-time Paralympian Ms. Chantal Petitclerc. Her leadership is based upon an incredible level and years of experience in knowing what it takes to win and the kind of performance environment we need to provide for our athletes to do their very best on the world stage.
Chris also referred a little bit to the sequencing for the notification of the sports. It is a whole process, and currently we have confirmed and nominated seven sports to be part of Team Canada leading into Rio. The remaining sports will be nominated and appointed from today up until about August 7, after which we will announce the overall Team Canada sequence.