Colourful opening ceremony kickstarts Paralympic Games

Paris, August 29

Just weeks after hosting the Olympics, Paris inaugurated the 2024 Paralympics on Wednesday with a nearly four-hour-long opening ceremony in the heart of the city.

Against the backdrop of a setting sun, thousands of athletes paraded down the famed Champs-Elysees avenue to Place de la Concorde in central Paris where French President Emmanuel Macron officially declared the Paralympic Games open.

About 50,000 people watched the ceremony in stands built around the iconic square, which is the biggest in Paris and is visible from afar because of its ancient Egyptian Obelisk. Accessibility for athletes in wheelchairs was facilitated with strips of asphalt laid along the avenue and placed over the square.

Over 4,000 athletes with physical, visual and intellectual impairments will compete in 22 sports from Thursday until September 8. Organisers say more than 2 million of the 2.8 million tickets have been sold for the various Paralympics events.

The opening ceremony was held outside the confines of a stadium, just like when the Olympics opened in the city on July 26. Fighter planes flew overhead, leaving red-white-and-blue vapours in the colours of the French national flag, before the delegations entered the square in alphabetical order.

Some delegations were huge — more than 250 athletes from Brazil — and some were tiny — less than a handful from Barbados and just three from Myanmar. International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said he hoped the Paris Paralympics would start an “inclusion revolution” beyond the field of sport.

The Paralympics flag was raised high into the night sky and its emblem adorned the top of the Arc de Triomphe about 3km away.

The closing ceremony will be held at Stade de France, the national stadium.