With a post-Covid Olympics of style and panache, Paris sets its sights on a French sporting revolution
AND now all eyes will turn to Paris 2024.
After a challenging postponed Olympics held under strict Covid countermeasures, the handover to the next host, France, will take place on Sunday with some big stunts, both in the Olympic stadium and on the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
These big celebrations in the heart of the French capital will be a foretaste of the Olympics in three years, with the 2024 Olympic opening ceremony slated for the centre of Paris among hundreds of thousands of people, rather than being the traditional extravaganza in a stadium.
The Paris Games will be rich in history: Spectacular venues will include the Palace of Versailles, the Grand Palais, the Champ de Mars arena, and La Concorde.
Unusually the games will divert to
Tahiti for the surfing competition at Teahupo’o.
Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet said the Tokyo Olympic Games organisers had won the “gold medal for adaptability’’.
Estanguet said his main takeaway from the Tokyo Olympics was that “sport and emotions prevail’’.
The handover to Paris 2024 at the closing ceremony would reflect the “symbolic Games” of Tokyo 2020, he said, promising it would be open, spectacular and creative. A huge flag will be flown off the Eiffel Tower and then used to make clothing.
The Paris organisers have been bold in leveraging their games across the nation, using the Games to get at least 30 minutes of daily physical education into schools, and encouraging more school swimming lessons (half of the country’s secondary students cannot swim).
They are also championing sustainability – all the food eaten by ath
letes will be “carbon neutral’’ and there will be no single-use plastics.
Organisers have also worked with the French Development Agency to promote significant environmental projects in France, Haiti and Africa.
Following on from the huge success of the new sports, focusing in Tokyo on young athletes such as skateboarding, climbing, BMX freestyle, 3x3 basketball and surfing, the Paris organisers have added “breaking’’ – also known as break dancing.
“Already, we have more than 20 worldwide and national partners by our side, more than 20,000 businesses registered to tender for Games contracts, more than 1800 local communities engaged in promoting sport and the Olympic and Paralympic values, more than 140,000 members signed up to the Paris 2024 Club, and every part of the French sports movement engaged,” Estanguet said.
The Paris Olympics will also promote public mass participation events alongside the marathon and the road cycling races, inviting participants to use the same course several hours after the Olympic events have been completed.
“As we prepare to receive the Olympic and Paralympic flags from our Japanese friends, everything is in place to bring our ambition to life,” Estanguet said.