“We’re going to vibrate”: the Olympic Games over, the Paris Paralympic Games take over on August 28, with the ambition of arousing the same popular enthusiasm and ensuring a lasting legacy.
“Many of our compatriots will discover these Paralympic Games and they will not be disappointed because it will have the same ingredients as for the Olympic Games,” promised Tony Estanguet, president of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, on Monday. Namely performance with “incredible athletes” and “extraordinary sites,” he specified at a press conference.
So there is no question of closing the Grand Palais, turning off the lights at the Château de Versailles or packing up the purple track at the Stade de France. In total, some 4,400 athletes will take part in eleven days of events scheduled until September 8, in 18 competition sites, 16 of which are identical to their Olympic counterparts.
Between the two competitions, the objective “is to continue to convince”, Marie-Amélie Le Fur, president of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee (CPSF), told AFP.
“What also made the difference at the Olympics was that there was a real popular fervor,” she continues. “If the public understands that they will find the same emotions, it will provide the ingredients for the most beautiful Paralympic Games in history.”
Will the public show up? For the time being, around one million tickets remain available out of the 2.5 million put on sale since the ticket office opened last October.
Acceleration
Despite prices announced as attractive – starting at 15 euros – sales have struggled to take off. However, they are accelerating, since 400,000 tickets have been sold since the start of the Olympics on July 26, the organizers assured on Monday, who are planning a new advertising campaign to promote the event.
Some of the venues that made the Games popular, starting with the Grand Palais (which will host wheelchair fencing and parataekwondo) and the Château de Versailles (paradressage), are already sold out. As are track paracycling (Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), sport shooting (Châteauroux) and the paratriathlon with its swimming section in the Seine.
Places remain available in 16 sports.
“We’re going to vibrate, we’re going to dream,” said Marie-Amélie le Fur during the press conference, who also sees the Olympic Games experience as “a societal opportunity.”
“You will also inevitably change your view of the situation of disability” with the discovery of “something new” and “the emotions of Paralympic sport which are not at all emotions of pity”.
The expected audience is mainly French and families, with however the start of the school year between the two weeks of competition.
Tony Estanguet acknowledged that it would be necessary to “adapt” to the context of this return to school and a possible resumption of political life, put on hold during the Games. Confident, the head of the organizing committee nevertheless warned that there was “no automatic effect”: “It is not because we succeeded in the Olympic Games that we will succeed in the Paralympic Games.”
Top 8 for the Blues
The impact of the event will also be seen in its ability to create a post-2024 era in the consideration of disability in everyday life. In Paris, for example, public transport, particularly the metro, which is old and not very accessible, remains a black spot.
On Friday, the city’s deputy in charge of accessibility, Lamia El Aaraje, highlighted the accessibility of bus and tram lines. “We will continue to work after the Games to make this legacy amplified,” she added.
On the sporting side, the CPSF is insisting on its “Inclusive Club” system, the aim of which is to register 3,000 additional clubs capable of hosting Paralympic athletes.
In the meantime, eyes will first turn on August 28 to the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées, the venues for the opening ceremony, again under the leadership of artistic director Thomas Jolly.
The opportunity to discover the French sports delegation, made up of more than 230 athletes – 34% of whom are women – including the Paralympic triathlon champion Alexis Hanquinquant and the 400m champion in 2016 Nantenin Keita, who were among the last torchbearers during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, on July 26 in the Tuileries Gardens.