it is the first day of the paralympic games here in Paris after last night's opening ceremony in the heart of the capital medals are already up for grabs today in the track cycling the swimming table tennis and in Taekwondo over 4,000 competitors represent representing over 160 countries are to take part and let's kick off our coverage this afternoon by talking to our sports reporter James Vina he is at port de versailes this afternoon that's where the gold ball competition is getting underway James look good to speak to you today I know this is one of the sports that's unique to the par Olympics tell us a bit about it it is NAA there's actually 22 sports within the Paro Olympics most of them are pretty much the same well equivalent of what we've been seeing over the last few weeks whether that's tennis uh whether it's the equestrian or plenty of other sports in athletics are pretty much the same but just adapted but there are two exceptions to that and one of those exceptions is indeed gold Bal gold Bal that is exclusive then to the par Olympics now what the aim is is that's on the field inside the sou of the stadium here in the south of Paris uh you have two teams going head-to-heads and the aim is quite simply to roll the ball and to throw it into the opponent's goal the goal which is pretty wide but it's made Tough by blindfolding every single opponent now this means that every athlete is competing on the same level no matter their visibility and it means that you cannot use of course any of of your eyesight you got to use your other senses other senses mean that you've got to listen for the ball rolling but on top of that also there's there are Bells inside that cling as the ball is thrown towards the other side and it's quite tough for the other opponents to try and catch that ball with before it gets into the net but on top of that uh well the professionals managed to put other ways of trying to mask trying to hide some of those sounds sometimes in the jumps that you see them do ahead of those of those throws and all of that guessing under way there here this afternoon in the South we're going to watch France on the women's side face off against Canada after that tonight on the men's side will France have to face off against Brazil Brazil who are the the defending Champions twice defending champions in the Paro Olympics so big uh big day for either side to come for the women's it's the first time it's actually Taken part in the par Olympics event those to come tonight but it is still the group stage which means that they still not there pressure of course started but there's still quite a bit of way to go before getting out of that group before trying to go onto those finals to try and lift any medals and trophies here in Paris so this happening here in the South and later on uh today as you mentioned still more medals uh to come from the first days after yesterday's opening ceremony the first medals to come including in the swimming which where we'll be heading over to later on that swimming taking place at L Force the uh the swimming Arena especially created for these games and uh which is being used just in the same way as the Olympics and actually uh there are so many competitions and while there are less Sports in away uh there are just more medals coming out because of all the categories uh that are divided into for every single uh sport in that way which means there are more medals to come plenty of excitement to come over the next two weeks and it's all kicking today and day one of the par Olympics