The start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will be given in 500 days, starting this Sunday. The French Paralympic and Sports Committee is preparing for this major event with great ambition.
Each week, Théo Curin, vice-world champion in para-swimming, takes us behind the scenes of preparations for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. A crucial deadline for the athletes of the French Paralympic team, and for the French Paralympian and athlete.
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The course of J – 500 before the Paralympic Games which will take place from August 28 to September 8, 2024, is an important marker for the sports director of the CPSF, Jean Minier.
“It’s very symbolic because we are experiencing a great first, and we are on a somewhat original retro-planning, of an edition which will take place in France, with a French team which will be much larger than usual. , and with a number of files to carry out, which are completely unusual for us, in the preparation of the Paralympic Games D – 500, before a highly anticipated edition and at the same time quite unpredictable for us, because the 22 sports on the program will see French teams entered, and this has never happened in the history of the Paralympic Games.
We will have to present, in Paris, a delegation twice as large as in Tokyo, with very experienced athletes, and athletes for whom these games will be the first. In terms of support, of course, it’s quite special. On our forecasts today, our projections today, we would be around 300 athletes maximum, knowing that we were barely 150 in Tokyo.
The objective is to exceed the record of the Tokyo Games where France finished 14th in the medal standings with 54 medals, 11 in gold, 15 in silver and 28 in bronze, twice as many as in Rio, in 2016.
“This is the whole purpose of the work carried out today by the National Sports Agency, which comes to support the performance projects of the federations in order to be able to try to prepare as well as possible for this deadline of Paris 2024.”
“France’s objective is to make a qualitative leap, when it was quantitative, between Rio and Tokyo. There, it is a question of doubling the number of gold medals to be able to consider being in the top 10. It is, at this stage, entirely possible.”
Jean Minier, sports director of the CPSFat franceinfo
The emblematic sites of the Paris Paralympic Games will be the same as for able-bodied
The main adaptations will concern transport.
“The bus access platforms, adapted for people in wheelchairs, are going to be key areas of these games. There, we really have a big subject. After, of course, the opening ceremony, which will also happen outside the walls of the Stade de France, will be very important. So it’s a form of adaptation, since it won’t take place on the Seine, and it’s a major innovation. (Editor’s note: they will take place in the heart of Paris, and more precisely between the Champs-Elysées and Place de la Concorde).
Me, I hope that in the stadiums of the 2024 Paralympic Games, there will already be a lot of spectators, adds Jean Minier. It’s a challenge, because in France when you organize a Paralympic event, you don’t always have a large audience. So there is already a challenge to fill the stadiums. And the second challenge is to fill the stadiums with an informed public, an audience that comes to see athletes, and athletes they know and sports they know.”
The volunteer recruitment campaign for the Paris 2024 Games has begun. 45,000 volunteers are expected. About a third will be dedicated to the Paralympic Games. The Organizing Committee of the Games pays particular attention to integrating as many volunteers as possible with disabilities.
