The world’s best Paralympic athletes, parading down France’s most famous boulevard with their prosthetic limbs, mobility chairs and stories of adversity, heading to a grand celebration of their prowess and sports on the Paris square where the French Revolutionaries of 1789 chopped off heads.
Paris organizers on Thursday announced their opening
ceremony plans for the Paralympics, an event with 4,400 athletes that will
follow the first post-COVID-19 pandemic Olympics in less than two years.
The attention-grabber is the venue itself: In a first, the
Paralympic opening show will be freed from a traditional stadium setting and
instead be held in the open in the French capital’s heart, on the
Champs-Elysées boulevard and the city’s biggest square, Place de la Concorde.
The once blood-soaked plaza, where King Louis XVI, his
queen, Marie Antoinette, and other nobles were guillotined during the French
Revolution that laid the first foundations of modern France, is shaping up as
an eye-catching focal point of the Paris Games.
Set like a gem between the Tuileries Gardens, the Seine
River and the majestic Crillon Hotel, the square will be converted into the
arena for the new Olympic sport of breakdancing, 3-on-3 basketball, BMX cycling
and skateboarding, coming back to the program after its Olympic debut at the
pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.
Only 17 days after the July 26-Aug. 11 Paris Olympics, the
Place de la Concorde will then take center stage for the unprecedented opening
ceremony of the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympics.
International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons
predicted a ceremony that will be “a thing of beauty, and a once-in-a-lifetime
event that will go down in all our histories.”
“This festival of inclusion all begins with the truly unique
experience of thousands of Paralympians parading down the world’s most famous
avenue. What an amazing thrill it’s going to be to enter the Champs-Elysées and
then make the journey down to Place de la Concorde, all the while being framed
by the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre,” he said in remarks distributed by 2024
organizers.
Organizers said space will be made at the ceremony for
65,000 people — equivalent to the crowd at a large Olympic stadium.
French Paralympic and Sports Committee president
Marie-Amélie Le Fur said breaking free of stadium confines “is a revolution.”
“Going down the Champs-Elysées to Place de la Concorde and
sharing this with nearly 65,000 people, in the heart of the capital, will be a
historic moment,” she said. “It’s unheard of.”
About 30,000 of those in attendance will be able to watch
the ceremony for free.
The venue choice is part of a massive effort by Paris
organizers to free the Olympics and Paralympics from the shackles of
traditional sports venues and turn the French capital into a giant playground
for sport during the Games, with the Eiffel Tower, Grand Palais and other
landmarks used as competition venues.
The concept — encapsulated in the official slogan, “Games
Wide Open” — is not without risk. The use of city sites as venues poses
security, transport and logistical challenges.
The Olympic opening ceremony will also break with tradition,
taking to the waters of the Seine instead of being held in a stadium.
Boats will parade the 10,500 athletes on the waterway from
east to west. Organizers are planning for at least 600,000 spectators, most of
them ticketless and watching for free, and are billing it as the largest
opening ceremony in Olympic history.
The opening and closing ceremonies for both the Olympics and
Paralympics will be directed by prize-winning French theater director Thomas
Joly. -AP
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