Team United States of America - Profile

The United States of America has participated at every Paralympic Games, and its athletes have won more gold medals and more medals of any colour than any other NPC. Swimmer Trischa Zorn, who competed at seven editions of the Games from 1980 to 2004, is the most successful athlete in the history of the Paralympic Games, winning more gold and total medals than any other athlete. In 2012 she was inducted into the Paralympic Hall of Fame. Only table tennis player Michael Dempsey has appeared at more Games than Zorn for a US athlete, with eight appearances from 1972 to 2000.

After Zorn, swimmers Jessica Long [23 total medals] and Erin Popovich [19 total medals] are the United States' next best performers. Popovic's 14 gold medals is one more than Long, who won six medals at Rio 2016. Long claimed gold in the SM8 200m individual medley in 2016, an event she also won in 2008 and 2012.

Athletics competitor Bart Dodson is the United States' top male performer, claiming 13 gold medals and 20 medals in total from 1984 to 2000. Fellow athletics competitor Tatyana McFadden won four gold medals and six in total in 2016, and has finished on the podium at four editions of the Paralympic Games, including silver in the T54 100m and bronze in the T54 200m as a 15-year-old in Athens in 2004. McFadden also has one winter Paralympic medal in cross-country skiing from 2014 to her name. She and compatriot Oksana Masters are among less than a dozen United States athletes to have won medals at both the summer and winter Games.

Outside of the pool and athletics stadium, the United States has claimed most of its medals in cycling, archery, and table tennis. In team sports, the United States has seen most success in wheelchair basketball, and is the only NPC to have claimed a medal at all five Games to feature wheelchair rugby.

The 2016 Games were the United States' most successful for some time. The 39 gold and 114 total medals its athletes won in Rio was the best since the nation hosted the 1996 Games in Atlanta, and the first time the NPC had won more than 100 total medals at the Games since Sydney 2000. In Rio the United States claimed silver [men] and bronze [women] in goalball, silver in wheelchair rugby, while both its men's and women's wheelchair basketball teams claimed gold, as did the women's sitting volleyball team.