The upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris promise to be a remarkable global event, bringing together athletes from around the world in the spirit of competition and camaraderie....
COVER STORY
The 2024 Summer Olympics, or Paris 2024, promises to be a landmark event, highlighting athletic excellence, innovation, and a commitment to a brighter future. This article delves into the key insights and highlights of the upcoming Olympic Games.
April 6, 1896, marked the opening of the first-ever modern Olympic Games, hosted by Athens, Greece. Fourteen nations and 241 athletes participated in these Games, with matches contested across seven venues in the city. One hundred and twenty-eight years later, the Olympic Games continue to exhibit the same level of excellence in sports, with athletes pushing their physical and mental limits to achieve peak performance.”
On July 26, 2024, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will open the 33rd edition of the Olympic Games in Paris, France, with athletes from around the world competing in a spirit of sportsmanship that has been constant since 1896. The 2024 Summer Olympics will feature 329 events in 32 sports, with 10,672 athletes representing 206 nations. Indeed, the Olympic Games have spread their wings across all continents, inviting athletes from a plethora of games.
As Paris prepares to host the Games for the third time, a 100 years after its 1924 edition, the city is ready to offer a unique and memorable experience. Paris first hosted the Olympic Games in 1900, which was the second Summer Olympics in history.
The 2024 Olympic Games are centered on sustainability and accessibility, reflecting the city’s commitment to hosting an eco-friendly and inclusive event. Iconic landmarks like the Stade de France will serve as key venues, alongside newly constructed, environmentally conscious facilities.
Moreover, the Games will utilize existing infrastructure where possible, minimizing environmental impact and showcasing Paris’s rich heritage. Paris will join London as the only city to host the Olympics three times.
London hosted the Games in 1908 (4th Games), 1948 (14th Games), and 2012 (30th Games). In addition to the sports competitions, cultural events will offer spectators a chance to engage with art, music, and cuisine, as well as experiencing open-air concerts and exhibitions.
The Olympic spirit is personified by athletes from all nations competing in a friendly and respectful environment, exhibiting their technique, grit, strength, and acumen. The values of sportsmanship and fair play are of paramount significance and have remained the cornerstone of these Games. Such principles foster a sense of unity among competitors and spectators alike.
The Olympic Truce, an ancient tradition calling for a pause of hostilities during the Games, emphasizes the message of peace and cooperation that is necessary in today’s ever-competitive, highly volatile world.
Moreover, the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Refugee Olympic Team will also participate, providing a platform for displaced athletes to compete and share their stories of resilience and determination with the world.
Strategic planning, compelling presentations, a strong vision, and persuasive dialogue resulted in Paris being selected as the host city for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The process was highly competitive, with multiple cities, including Budapest (Hungary), Los Angeles (USA), Rome (Italy), and Hamburg (Germany), vying for the honor. Each city brought unique attributes and strengths to the negotiating table. Paris’s bid for the 2024 Olympics was enveloped in a vision of sustainability, innovation, and inclusivity.
The city presented a well-organized plan that emphasized the use of existing infrastructure, minimizing environmental impact, and creating a lasting legacy for future generations. One of the standout features of Paris’s bid was its commitment to sustainability, a major action plan increasingly pursued by governments and corporations alike.
Instead of hosting it in a stadium, as has been done for years, the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games will feature an original concept. On July 26, 2024, the ceremony will be held along the Seine River.
The parade of athletes will take place on the Seine, with each national delegation aboard individual boats equipped with cameras to offer television and online viewers close-up views of the athletes. The athletes will journey along a 6-kilometer route through the center of Paris.
For the first time, the ceremony will be open to a large audience with free admission for most spectators. Fans can access the upper stands without tickets, while tickets will be required for the lower levels. Eighty giant screens and strategically placed speakers will enhance the experience. It is expected that the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony will be the largest in Olympic history.
Most sporting events at Paris 2024 will take place in Paris and its metropolitan area, including neighboring cities such as Saint-Denis, Le Bourget, Nanterre, Versailles, and Vaires-sur-Marne. The city of Paris has been divided into various zones, each hosting a number of events. These zones are the Grand Paris Zone, Paris Centre Zone, Versailles Zone, and Outlying Venues, which refer to cities and venues located farther from the host city.
Mascot
The mascots for Paris 2024 are Phryges caps, soft conical hats with bent tops. These caps were worn by various ancient peoples in Eastern Europe, Anatolia, and Asia, including Persians, Medes, and Scythians. For Paris 2024, the mascots are a pair of anthropomorphic Phrygian caps, a French symbol of freedom and liberty. They share the motto: “Alone we go faster, but together we go further.”
In February 2024, Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet unveiled the Olympic and Paralympic medals for the Games, showcasing a unique combination of history and craftsmanship. Each medal features embedded hexagon-shaped tokens of scrap iron taken from the original construction of the Eiffel Tower, with the Games logo engraved into it. As many as 5,084 medals will be produced by the French mint Monnaie de Paris and designed by the luxury jewelry firm Chaumet. The reverse side of the medals depicts Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, inside the Panathenaic Stadium, which hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896.
The Parthenon and the Eiffel Tower are also visible in the background, signifying the association between ancient and modern games.
Each medal weighs between 455 and 529 grams, has a diameter of 85 mm, and is 9.2 mm thick. The gold medals are composed of 98.8 percent silver and 1.13 percent gold, while the bronze medals are made of copper, zinc, and tin.
Breaking, or breakdancing, is a style of street dance that originated in the USA in the 1970s. Paris 2024 marks the sport’s official debut in the Olympics and the first time a dancesport discipline is featured. Following its successful debut at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, breaking joins sport climbing and surfing as additional sports for Paris 2024. The event will feature thirty-two breakers, with sixteen B-Boys and sixteen B-Girls competing in face-to-face single battles.
As Paris prepares to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world, the city’s transit system, RATP, has implemented an innovative solution for language barriers. Metro workers will be equipped with handheld AI translation devices called Tradivia to assist non-French-speaking tourists. These devices can translate between French and 16 languages, including English, Arabic, Mandarin, and Korean. The translations appear on the device’s screen and can also be read aloud, making communication smoother for visitors
The 2024 Summer Olympics promises to be a landmark event, showcasing athletic excellence, innovation, and a commitment to a brighter future. This event will celebrate unity, diversity, and inclusivity, reminding us that sports have the power to bring us all together in the spirit of competition.
