Paralympic California athletes to watch

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Mohamed Lahna of Morocco during the ITU World ParaTriathlon Yokohama on May 12, 2018 in Yokohama, Japan. (Photo by Delly Carr/Getty Images)

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PARIS - The Paralympic Games kick off Wednesday as roughly 4,400 athletes with disabilities, permanent injuries or impairments prepare to compete for 549 medals across 22 sports over 11 days in Paris.

Team USA will send a total of 225 athletes from 39 states to the French capital, which just hosted the Olympics.

California has the most Paralympians overall, with a total of 29 athletes competing, although Minnesota is home to the most Paralympians per capita in the nation: 1.93 per 1 million people in the state.

Some of those California athletes include:

Volleyball champion Bethany Zummo, a Dublin native, who currently coaches at Livermore's NorCal Volleyball Club and was born with congenital disorders that led to the amputation of her right foot at age 2.
Mohamed Lahna, a resident of Hayward who was born in Casablanca, Morocco, will compete in the triathlon. Lahna was born with a rare birth defect that effectively left him without a right femur and fibula.
Skyler Espinoza of Menlo Park, who has a bachelor's from Columbia University and a master's from Stanford University, where she was also on their rowing teams. She will be competing in the cycling category, an activity she discovered following back surgery.

The sports categories range from sitting volleyball to wheelchair basketball.

The games run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.

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Here's a list of the Californian Paralympic athletes, according to Team USA:

Judo

Christella Garcia, Sacramento

Para-cyling

Samantha Bosco, Claremont

Hannah Chadwick, El Cerrito

Skyler Espinoza, Menlo Park

Bryan Larsen, Windsor

Branden Walton, Windsor

Jamie Whitmore, Somerset

Paratriathlon

Mark Barr, Davis

Zack Goodman, San Diego

Mohamed Lahna, Hayward

Powerlifting

Ashley Dyce, Colton

Shooting

YanXiao Gong, Malibu

Kevin Nguyen, Westminster

U.S. volleyball player Bethany Zummo at the Olympic media summit on March 7, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA. (Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images)