Paris Paralympic Games 2024: exceptional and must-see games

All audiences

“After the Games, there’s still the Games.” This is the headline of the promotion campaign of the Paris Paralympic Games 2024 held from 28 August to 8 September, twelve days during which public from all over the world will share “outstanding performance from exceptional athletes”. The Paralympic Games include 4,400 athletes representing 170 nations, competing in 549 venues of 22 sports. The French delegation includes 257 sportspersons, of which more than half are students or alumni, according to AEF info.

The story of the Paralympic Games started in 1948 in a military hospital treating paraplegic patients, all World War II veterans, located in a small city in the North of London, Stoke Mandeville. And for this the Games were first called International Games of Stoke Mandeville, then became the Paralympic Games throughout the various editions. The first official Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, six days after the closing of the Olympic Games.

Close to the Olympic Games

The Paris Paralympic Games, the first in France, are indeed organised very close to the Olympic Games that closed two weeks earlier. And this proximity is not only in time, but also in space, since the official website of Paris 2024 explains that “almost all competition sites will be identical between the Paralympic and Olympic Games, except for road competitions”. Paralympic venues will thus take place on the same sites as the Olympic venues. This will be the case for 15 sports out of 22 set in the schedule of the Paralympic Games, for a total of 549 venues divided in 269 sessions including 4,440 athletes.

French students and former students in competition

According to AEF info, which has led its own inquiry, analysing the official list of 257 French athletes in competition, “a fifth of the French delegation at the Paralympic Games is currently composed of students, and 35% attended higher education studies”. In total, more than half (55%) of athletes are students or former students. According to AEF, disciplines most studied by these athletes are economy, management, business and sales (24.4%) and engineering science (22.5%). Institutions registering most students and former students in the Paralympic selection are: University of Grenoble Alpes (6 alumni), University of Bordeaux (5 alumni), University of Paris Cité and IFMK (Physio-Massage Training Institute) in Limoges (4 alumni and/or students).

Seeing big

Regardless of the status of sportspersons in competition, for the site of the City of Paris, the 549 venues in the programme will “take place in exceptional sites”, such as the esplanade of the Invalides for para archery, the vicinities of the Eiffel tower for blind football, the Champ-de-Mars for para judo and wheelchair rugby, or the gardens of the Versailles Palace for para horse riding. The Paralympic Games are “just as exceptional and must-see as the Olympic Games” sums up the information website of the government.

In this spirit, on 28 August, the opening ceremony will be held for the first time ever, again created by Thomas Jolly, the stage director of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Paris 2024 “sees big”, by reinventing the opening ceremony and taking it out of a traditional frame. The ceremony will take place on the Place de la Concorde et on the Champs-Elysées, which, according to the organisers, will make this event an “unprecedented celebration in the heart of the city”. The ceremony will open with a popular parade down the legendary Champs-Elysées Avenue, where the 184 delegations from all the participating countries will march past. Because, concludes the official website, “the Games are about sport, but also so much more”. The Games, whether Paralympic or Olympic, are a “popular, multicultural festival for the whole world”.

A large Paralympic team of refugees

These Games will be all the more exceptional in that the International Paralympic Committee has announced the largest ever Paralympic team of refugees for Paris 2024. Since the Rio Games in 2016, a team of refugees has been taking part in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Not attached to any national committee, “it enables athletes with refugee status to take part in international competition”.

For Paris 2024, this will be the third time that Paralympic athletes have competed for this team. It will even be the largest ever: eight will compete at the Paris Games 2024. According to the official Olympic website, the Paralympic refugee team will be the first to march down the Place de la Concorde on 28 August, during the opening ceremony of the Games. And with one idea in mind: to make an impression and mark the history of the Games.