After 16 sizzling medal days in Paris during the 2024 Olympic Games, it is time to make history at the Paralympic Games. The French capital has hosted three Summer Olympic Games, but it will be the city and nation’s first Summer Paralympic Games.
And the hosts are eager to make sure it is unforgettable.
The Paralympic Games Paris 2024 takes place from 28 August to 8 September, with 4,400 athletes set to compete. This includes eight athletes and one guide representing the Refugee Paralympic Team, which is making its third Paralympic appearance.
Twenty sports featuring athletes with physical, vision, and intellectual impairments will compete at Paris 2024, with 549 sets of medals up for grabs across 11 days of competition.
Similar to the 2024 Olympics where there was full gender parity on the field of play for the first time in Games history, the 2024 Paralympic Games will also go down in the history books thanks to a record 236 medal events for women and the most female competitors ever.
The Paralympic flame will be lit in Stoke Mandeville, a British village that first hosted the predecessor of the Games in 1948 and is considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Movement. Following the lighting on 24 August, the flame will travel to France.
Four days later, on 28 August, the Paralympic cauldron will be lit at an Opening Ceremony in central Paris. Following on the theme from the Olympic Games, this Opening Ceremony will be the first to be hosted outside a stadium. Instead of floating along the Seine in boats, however, athletes will parade through the Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde with about 65,000 spectators along the route and at the finish point.
Many of the venues that have dazzled spectators during the Olympics will also set the stage for Paralympic sports action. Some of the venues are hosting Paralympic equivalents of Olympic sports. For example, the archery venue Invalides will now host Para archery, Grand Palais will transition from fencing to wheelchair fencing, and equestrian will return to Chateau de Versailles for Para equestrian competitions.
Other venues will see an even bigger transformation. Champ-de-Mars Arena, the scene of Teddy Riner’s double gold judo triumph, will welcome the best wheelchair rugby players of the world, while the Eiffel Tower Stadium’s beach volleyball courts will be converted into grassy pitches for blind football.
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