Paris 2024, Games Wide Open — A Preview of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
Paris 2024, Games Wide Open — A Preview of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games
With the world’s biggest sporting event just a year away, here are a few reasons to keep your eye on Paris 2024, the Games for everyone.
Words Pyo Youngso
Courtesy of Atout France
Paris 2024 by the Numbers
1924
The eighth Summer Olympics were first held in Paris in 1924. This year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games mark the first time in 100 years that France will host an international sporting event of this scale.
15⁄10
The Paris Olympics run for 15 days, from July 26 to August 11, 2024, and the Paris Paralympics for 10 days, from August 28 to September 8.
16+1
Events will take place in 16 French cities, including Paris, Lille, Bordeaux, and Marseille. Another first: for the first time ever, one French overseas territory will also take part in the Games. The surfing competition will be held in Teahupo’o, French Polynesia.
10,500
The Paris 2024 Olympics will feature 32 sports and 48 disciplines, with a total of 10,500 athletes competing. Another 4,400 athletes will take part in the Paralympics.
1,340,000
The total number of tickets for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. With 10 million Olympic tickets and 3.4 million Paralympic tickets set to go on sale, it is the largest number in Olympic history.
350,000
The amount of television broadcast time planned across the Olympics and Paralympics: a whopping 350,000 hours!
100
For the first time in Olympic history, the Games are set to achieve gender parity among participants, making them 100 percent gender-equal.
Key Themes of Paris 2024
A Rendezvous of Sport and Heritage
Paris’s most iconic cultural landmarks will be transformed into competition venues. Spectators can watch beach volleyball at the Eiffel Tower and archery at Les Invalides. The aim is clear: to showcase France’s beautiful heritage and landscapes alongside the sporting action.
An Opening Ceremony Beyond the Stadium
For the first time in Olympic and Paralympic history, the opening ceremony will be held outside a stadium. The Olympics will begin along a six-kilometer stretch of the Seine, and the Paralympics on the Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde. Most of the events accompanying the ceremonies will be free, and hundreds of thousands of spectators are expected.
A Younger Olympics
Reflecting changing times and younger sensibilities, modern sports such as surfing, climbing, and skateboarding have been added. Especially eye-catching is the debut of breaking, a genre that began in 1990s American hip-hop culture and straddles the line between art and sport. It will take place at Place de la Concorde alongside skateboarding. Sport climbing will be held in Île-de-France, and surfing in Teahupo’o, French Polynesia.
A Stadium That Hosts the Olympics Twice
Stade départemental Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes, on the outskirts of Paris, will become a venue for a second Olympics after 1924. Since it was built 100 years ago, renovation work is underway in time for the Games.
Games for Everyone
The slogan of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games is “Games Wide Open.” True to its words, the organizers aim to make the Games open to all, focusing on improving the accessibility of event-related infrastructure across the city. Public transportation is being adapted for people with mobility impairments who use assistive devices, and a 185-kilometer wheelchair-only route, the “Olympic Lane,” will be set up for the duration of the Games.
Sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games
Paris 2024 puts sustainability front and center. The goal is to cut the carbon footprint in half compared with the 2012 London Olympics while offsetting more than the carbon emitted during the Games. To that end, more than 90 percent of the required infrastructure will come from existing facilities, such as the Stade de France, Bercy Arena, and Stade Roland Garros, as well as Paris’s cultural heritage sites, including the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, the Palace of Versailles, Champ-de-Mars park, the Grand Palais, and Les Invalides. Using reusable and recyclable sustainable materials instead of concrete is a given.
The 13 million meals served during the Games will use fresh ingredients with minimal food miles from each host region, with the environmental impact in mind, and will also be a chance to experience the food cultures of France’s many regions (80 percent of ingredients will be French, 25 percent will be sourced within a 250-kilometer radius, and 30 percent will be organic). Sixty percent of the meals prepared for spectators will be vegetarian, double the share at previous Olympic and Paralympic Games. Single-use plastic will be cut in half, and a system for composting food waste is also in the works.
The Games are also being planned with their legacy in mind. An Athletes’ Village is being built in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris, for 15,000 participating athletes. About 2,230 homes in the village and 1,300 in the media village will be converted into residential housing after the Games. Public sports facilities in areas renovated for the Games will be returned to local residents in full. Paris 2024 will also leave behind entirely new landmarks. The Saint-Denis Olympic Aquatics Centre, which will host water polo, diving, and artistic swimming, is drawing attention as an eco-friendly building designed with bio-based materials. Parisians will also welcome the news that the triathlon, para triathlon, and open-water events will be held in the Seine between the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides. The Games look set to be an important turning point in restoring the water quality of Île-de-France’s waterways to the point where swimming is possible. Water-quality improvements will continue after the Olympics and Paralympics, with the goal of opening 23 outdoor swimming sites across Greater Paris, including the city itself.