Paris 2024 picks up the baton

Tokyo 2020 is history. With the feeling that beyond the gray atmosphere that has surrounded the event outside the sports venues, success has resided in carrying out these Games, Paris picks up the baton from the Japanese capital with a very different tone. The French city exhibits the hope that in three years the covid-19 pandemic will be history or at least it will not condition life as it currently does, allowing an exuberant Olympic event, which will become a whole celebration.

In this general atmosphere of joy, the French capital was shown to the world in the ceremony organized in the Trocadero Square, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, adorned with the tricolor flags of France on the occasion of the official relay to Tokyo in the final stretch of the closing of the Games. A whole party under the most multicultural aspect of Gallic society, with the presence of some of the French Olympians in Tokyo who had already returned and an exhibition of ‘breakdance’, a discipline that will debut in the Olympic program in three years, in the line of approach to the younger public that the Games have undertaken in recent times.

Such is the enthusiasm with which Paris assumes the Olympic witness that even the deployment of a flag with the logo of its Games of colossal dimensions -90 meters long by 60 wide- was planned, finally replaced by a virtual projection with the Tower Eiffel as a mast for the weather conditions. The tone of the event, spiced up with the exhibition of the French Acrobatic Patrol, who painted the sky over the city of light with the colors of the French flag, contrasted with the restraint of the ceremony in Tokyo, a city that has lived the Games that he celebrated so much in 2013 as a cumbersome obligation in times of covid.

In the Japanese capital, Anne Hidalgo, the Spanish mayor of Paris, collected the Olympic flag. He did it in a restrained way, in line with what was seen in Tokyo in recent weeks. The staging was very different from that of Shinzo Abe in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. The then Prime Minister of Japan appeared in the legendary Maracana dressed as Super Mario, but the illusion turned into a nightmare with the appearance of the coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 , which has ended up turning Tokyo 2020 into a punishment that will leave a costly economic wound in the country in the absence of spectators and that has also brought down the popularity of the authorities among the population to historic lows.

Paris has learned from the difficult experience of Tokyo, according to Hidalgo herself, although she faces her great opportunity in a vitalist way. «The 2024 Games will be something very positive for our country. They arrive at a good time ”, assured the first Parisian mayor, in a clear statement of the sensation with which the city faces an appointment that also arrives a century after the last one it hosted, in 1924. The French capital, which also welcomed In the 1900 Games, it will become the third triple venue in 2024, after Athens and London, an exclusive club to be joined in 2028 by Los Angeles, host in 1932 and 1984.

Height installations

The French capital also exhibits a series of emblematic locations for its competitions. The Stade de France de Saint-Denis will be the epicenter of the Paris 2024 Games, as the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the track and field athletics competitions. Despite its little more than two decades of life, it is a long-standing sports venue, home to the finals of a World Cup, a European Championship and two editions of the Soccer Champions League, as well as two Rugby World Cups and one Of athletics.

However, if there is an installation that oozes history in the Parisian project, it is Roland Garros, which, as in 2012 in London, will give the Olympic event the luster of a Grand Slam venue for tennis. The Parc des Princes, home to Paris Saint-Germain and the venue for the first finals of the European Cup for football clubs in 1956 and the Eurocup in 1960, will also be a high-profile stage for the sport of eleven against eleven.

The best cyclists in the world will feel at home when they race along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where the Tour de France passes each year on its last day, which serves as a tribute to the survivors of the most demanding race of the planet. And it is that the best known corners of the city of light will be impregnated with the Olympic spirit. The gardens of the Champ de Mars, next to the Eiffel Tower, will host the beach volleyball events; the architectural complex of Les Invalides will host the archery competition; Open water swimming, triathlon and marathon events will take place on the Seine River and its banks; and in the Grand Palais, a monumental building, fencing and taekwondo will take place. Idyllic settings to revitalize the biggest event in world sport.