Paris, October 20 (BUS) : The world’s best Paralympic athletes, parading down France’s most famous street with their prosthetics, wheelchairs and tough stories, head to a grand celebration of their prowess and their sports in the Paris Arena.
Paris organizers Thursday announced plans for the opening ceremony for the Paralympics, an event involving 4,400 athletes that will follow the first Olympics after the COVID-19 pandemic in less than two years, according to the Associated Press.
The place that attracts attention is the venue itself: at first, the opening parade of the Paralympics will be freed from the traditional stadium atmosphere and instead will take place in the open in the heart of the French capital, on the Champs-Elysées and the city’s largest square, Place de la Concorde.
The blood-soaked arena where King Louis XVI, his queen Marie Antoinette and other nobles were murdered during the French Revolution that laid the first foundations of modern France, is posing as the eye-catching focal point of the Paris Games.
Nestled like a jewel between the Tuileries Gardens, the River Seine and the majestic Crillon Hotel, the plaza will be transformed into an arena for the new Olympic sport of break-dancing, 3-on-3 basketball, cycling and skateboarding, back to program after its Olympic appearance at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in
2021.
Just 17 days later from 26th July-August. 11 Paris Olympics, Place de la Concorde will take center stage at the unprecedented opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games August 28-September 8.
International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons predicted a ceremony that would be “a thing of beauty, a once-in-a-lifetime event that will go down on all of our dates”.
About 30,000 attendees will be able to watch the concert for free. The venue selection is part of a massive effort by Paris organizers to free the Olympic and Paralympic Games from the constraints of traditional sports venues and transform the French capital into a giant playground for sports during the Games, with the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais and other landmarks used as competition venues.