Paris gears up for para sports, capitalises on Olympics

The 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris begin on Wednesday with a spectacular opening ceremony in a city still reeling from a hugely successful Olympic Games.

A new generation of Paralympians is joining seasoned veterans and competing in many of the same venues where Olympic sports were once held.

A total of 18 of the 35 Olympic venues will be used for the Paralympic Games, which run until September 8. One of them is the Grand Palais, which received rave reviews for its fencing and taekwondo events held under a lavishly decorated roof.

The La Defense Arena is also back, hosting 141 gold medal events in para-swimming. The Stade de France is also back, hosting athletics.

The Games will open with a ceremony at the Place de la Concorde, the square in the centre of Paris where skateboarding and other urban sports took place during the Olympics.

Like the Olympic Games ceremony on the Seine, the ceremony will take place outside the main stadium for the first time during the Paralympic Games.

The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England, the birthplace of the Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel.

Theatre director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympic opening ceremony, said there was deep symbolism in placing the Paralympic ceremony in the centre of the French capital – a city whose metro system in particular is completely unadapted to the needs of wheelchair users.

“Placing Paralympic athletes in the heart of the city is already a political beacon in the sense that the city is not sufficiently adapted to every disabled person,” said Jolly.

According to the organizers, the buses in Paris are wheelchair-friendly and they have also deployed 1,000 specially adapted taxis.

Ticket sales have slowed down somewhat since the Olympics, with organizers saying that more than 1.9 million tickets have been sold.

New stars, familiar faces

Every Games produces new stars and this edition will be no exception. Take for example American sprinter/high jumper Ezra Frech, who at the age of 19 already received a lot of publicity for his trip to Paris.

Even more familiar names are returning: British amputee sprinter Jonnie Peacock was one of the standout athletes at London 2012, dusting off his running blade last year to make a comeback in his bid for a fourth consecutive Paralympic medal.

Off the court, Iranian sitting volleyball legend Morteza Mehrzad, who is 2.46 meters tall, will once again attempt to win gold.

But the Paralympic Games have a broader message than just sport. Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, told AFP earlier this year that he hoped the Paris Games would put the issues facing people with disabilities back at the top of the world’s list of priorities.

Parsons believes the Games will “have a huge impact on the way people with disabilities are perceived around the world”.

“This is one of the main expectations we have around Paris 2024; we believe we need to put people with disabilities back on the global agenda,” the Brazilian said.

He argued that disability has lagged behind sexual and gender identity in recent years.

“We believe that people with disabilities are being left behind. There is very little debate about people with disabilities.”

Paralympic powerhouse China is sending a strong team – the Chinese dominated the medal tally at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games three years ago, winning 96 gold medals. Great Britain was second with 41 gold medals.

Host country France is riding on the success of its Olympic team and is aiming for a significant improvement on the 11 gold medals it won in 2021.

Ukraine, traditionally one of the most medal-winning countries at the Paralympic Games, is sending a team of 140 athletes across 17 sports, despite the challenges they face as they prepare for war against Russian forces.

The 96 athletes from Russia and Belarus will compete under a neutral flag, but will not be allowed to attend the opening and closing ceremonies.

The Russian and Belarusian federations were both suspended following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but their competitors are allowed to participate as neutral countries provided they have shown no support for the war.