More than 4,000 athletes will compete across 22 sports in the French capital over the next two weeks, as the city’s iconic sites are showcased again in the second part of the Paris 2024 summer.
For those missing the Olympics and those who missed out attending in Paris, the plea from the Paralympics leadership is: “The party is not over.”
The last two weeks have been spent recovering and reconfiguring venues in the French capital as the Paralympics looks to seize the biggest platform for the games since London 2012.
Like at the Olympics, the opening ceremony on Wednesday night will also be away from the traditional confines of the stadium but with its own feel as it is centred around different landmarks in Paris.
Thousands of athletes will parade on the Champs-Elysees before the focal point of the ceremony at Place de la Concorde.
International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons told Sky News: “We know that many Parisians leave Paris during the summer and, especially because of the Olympics they left, and they are probably watching on TV and maybe regretting that they have left because they think, ‘oh, we missed the party’.
“But the party is not over. We have the Paralympics and they will be able to experience that same feeling.”
More than 4,000 athletes will compete across 22 sports until 8 September, with blind football taking place beneath the Eiffel Tower as the city’s iconic sites are showcased again in the second part of the Paris 2024 summer.
“No one goes and experiences a Paralympic event and goes back home feeling the same about humankind, about themselves,” Mr Parsons said.
“It is really transformational – positive and exciting sport. So we believe that we will have full stadia.”
There is a push to sell tickets, especially after the Rio Paralympics couldn’t match the record crowds seen in London – while still registering the second-highest games attendance – and fans were shut out by the pandemic in Tokyo in 2021.
The benchmark is still the 2.7 million tickets sold at the 2012 Games.
“London was the number one,” Mr Parsons said.
“I think London was the games that changed and put the Paralympics in a new perspective. But from then on we have been building that, in Rio and Tokyo and the winter editions as well.
“So Paris will be a new chapter of that… another step in the path of growing the Paralympic Games.”
Britain has never topped the Paralympics medals count but has finished second at every summer games this century, apart from dipping to third at London 2012 behind China and Russia.
