Paris closes its first Paralympic Games

(Paris) Paris closed a “historic” Olympic summer on Sunday evening, with a final party with electro sounds at the Stade de France to bring the Paralympic Games to a close.

With one breath, boccia gold medallist Aurélie Aubert, surrounded by several French athletes who made their mark on the Games, extinguished the Paralympic flame at the Stade de France, symbolising the end of an unprecedented season in France.

A few kilometers away, the now famous cauldron, this illuminated ball installed in the Tuileries garden, in the heart of the French capital, has also darkened.

“France had a date with History, and it answered the call,” declared Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, in his closing ceremony speech. “And if these emotions were fleeting, the memory of this historic summer will remain engraved in us.”

The Olympic Games, marked among other things by an unprecedented ceremony in the city, then the Paralympics, the first ever organized on French soil, were overall a success during this summer “where people talked to each other, this summer where France was happy”, Estanguet continued.

Parisian historic sites, from the Grand Palais to the temporary stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, passing by the Esplanade des Invalides or the Place de la Concorde, have often left as much of an impression as the sporting events for which around 12.1 million tickets were sold, Olympics and Paralympics combined. The previous record was 11 million, the organizers claimed. In Paris, 2.5 million were sold for the Paralympics, a little less than in London in 2012.

Giant dance floor

The Paralympic flag was handed over to Los Angeles, which will host the next Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028, in the presence of the mayors of the two cities, Anne Hidalgo of France and Karen Bass of California.

The Stade de France was then transformed into a giant dance floor for an hour of musical entertainment, around the theme “Paris is a party”, launched by Jean-Michel Jarre, the godfather of French electro.

Twenty-three other big names in electro music were to follow, including Kungs and Kavinsky, all embodying the internationally renowned electro “French Touch”, in a Stade de France where some 4,400 para-athletes and numerous volunteers were present one last time.

Among them, the Chinese delegation finished first in this edition, for the sixth consecutive time, with 94 titles (220 medals), ahead of Great Britain (49 gold) and the United States (36 gold).

On the French side, Aurélie Aubert and para-shooting champion Tanguy De La Forest were the standard-bearers for this event: the Blues fulfilled their objective of entering the top 8 with 19 gold medals (75 medals in total), an objective displayed before the competition.

Spectacular

Twelve years after the London edition, which was a founding event in terms of its popular and media success, “Paris-2024 has set a benchmark for all future Paralympic Games,” declared Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, on Sunday evening, hailing in his speech “the most spectacular Paralympic Games of all time.”

In terms of media coverage, 165 television channels followed the event, and 168 delegations took part in the competition, again something never seen before.

It remains to be seen whether these Paris Games will leave a solid legacy in terms of taking into account the rights of people with disabilities.

“Not an enchanted parenthesis”

For Michael Jeremiasz, the French team’s chef de mission for the Paralympics, “we can’t back down” on this point. The Paralympics, he hopes, “will contribute to making the way we look at others more commonplace, that the State and the government feel obliged to do the job and that we accelerate this transformation, that all the projects to access this citizenship are put in place”, mentioning in particular access to employment.

“We must ensure that this is not an enchanted interlude,” warns Jeremiasz, because “it would be more serious than if we had not organised the Games.”

The president of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, spoke again on Sunday about the “metro for all” project, “the biggest transport challenge in the region over the coming decades”, while the very old Parisian network is criticized for its lack of accessibility.

A vast and costly project, the feasibility of which still needs to be discussed.

“We all have a collective responsibility to use the momentum of the Paralympic Games to make this world a more inclusive place,” Parsons said. “We must enable people with disabilities to excel off the field of play.”