A guide to the top Paralympic accounts to follow on Instagram at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games.

The Americans enter the Sochi 2014 Paralympic ice sledge hockey competition as one of the teams favoured to make the podium.

A number of World and Paralympic champions including Brazil’s Terezinha Guilhermina and Switzerland’s Marcel Hug will be amongst the 490 athletes taking part in the first IPC Athletics Grand Prix of the season which starts on Saturday (22 February) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Four of the seven Dutch athletes headed to Sochi will compete in snowboard, a discipline set to make its Paralympic debut.

Between the end of the Olympics and start of the Paralympics, top Canadian athletes will visit and speak to schools across Canada.

Nordic skier Mariann Marthinsen is aiming to follow on from fellow national greats at Sochi 2014 by winning her first Paralympic gold at her fifth winter and summer Games, to continue her current stunning form in cross-country skiing.

Representatives of the IPC, ISSF and Italian Shotgun Shooting Federation met to discuss the potential for para-clay target shooting to become an IPC Shooting recognised discipline.

The Swiss delegation typically fields their strongest Paralympic Winter Games teams in alpine skiing.

The Austrians will be led by standing skiers Matthias Lanzinger and Markus Salcher, along with sit skier Claudia Loesch.

With a strong contingent of alpine skiers headed to Sochi, can Italy add to their total of 61 medals at the Paralympic Winter Games?