Being the follow-up act to the Paris Olympics is no easy task, but the Paralympic Games that begin Wednesday promise to offer up their own fair share of memorable sporting moments.
This is an event that highlights the human ability to overcome hardships and disabilities, so the word "insurmountable" isn't one you're likely to hear in Paris over the next two weeks as around 4,400 athletes with a wide range of life-impacting impairments compete for medals in 549 events across 22 sports.

Spanish champions Real Madrid earned a 3-0 win over Real Valladolid in La Liga on Sunday as Kylian Mbappe made his Santiago Bernabeu bow without finding the net.
Atletico Madrid comfortably beat last season's surprise package Girona by the same scoreline later on in the capital.

Barcelona loaned out French defender Clément Lenglet for the third straight year on Monday, and sent Brazil teenager Vitor Roque to Real Betis after just a half-season.
Lenglet has gone this time to La Liga rival Atletico Madrid which said it signed the 29-year-old center-back "until the end of this season."

Endrick needed only 10 minutes to make an impression in his debut with Real Madrid.
The Brazil teenager replaced Kylian Mbappé late in the match and scored deep into stoppage time to seal Madrid's 3-0 win over Valladolid on Sunday.

German veteran Thomas Müller has set a Bayern Munich club record for Bundesliga appearances.
The 34-year-old Müller made his 474th league appearance for Bayern on Sunday, going on as a substitute in the second half of Bayern's 3-2 win at Wolfsburg.

Ons Jabeur, the 2022 U.S. Open women's runner-up, withdrew from this year's tournament Thursday because of a shoulder injury.
Jabeur was to be the No. 17 seed in the tournament that begins Monday. The U.S. Tennis Association said Elise Mertens, the next-highest player eligible to be seeded, will become the No. 33 seed.

Valentina Petrillo fell in love with athletics as a 7-year-old while watching Italian sprinter Pietro Mennea win gold in the 200 meters at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
"I said I wanted to be like him," said Petrillo, a transgender woman who was raised as a boy. "I wanted to put on the blue (Italy) shirt, I wanted to go to the Olympics. But — and there was a but — I wanted to do it as a woman because I didn't feel like a man, I didn't feel like myself."

The Dutch Grand Prix has generally been a party for Max Verstappen and his legions of orange-clad fans. This year could be very different.
Verstappen has won all three races at the beach-side Zandvoort track since the Dutch Grand Prix returned to the Formula 1 schedule in 2021.

Jude Bellingham has sustained a right-leg muscle injury, Real Madrid said Friday.
Madrid did not say how many games the England midfielder would miss but media reports said he could be out for up to a month.

In the years to come, the experiment unfolding at Chelsea under their American investors will be a fascinating case study in how to run a soccer club.
