The sun rises over the Eiffel Tower today, as Paris joins an elite club of cities that have hosted the Olympic Games three times. These Olympic Games mark exactly a century since the City of Light last welcomed the world’s greatest athletes to its streets, stadiums, and now for the first time, its iconic river.
In a touching tribute to the host city, every medal awarded at the Paris 2024 Olympics will carry a piece of Parisian history. Each medal is crafted from recycled materials and includes an iron hexagon from the Eiffel Tower, removed during renovation work. It’s a special gift to all champions who will take home not just a medal, but a small piece of the City of Light itself.
The 2024 Paris Olympic Games have many more interesting facts for sports fans and we can’t wait to share them with you! Here’s our preview, with everything you need to know to enjoy this Seine-sational event to the fullest.
The Olympic Games 2024 in Numbers
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are set to be a colossus of an event, with numbers that boggle the mind — 10,500 of the world’s finest athletes from over 200 nations, along with the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, will meet in one city. Now add 32 sports, 329 events, and 35 venues spread across one of the most beautiful urban landscapes in the world.
Behind the scenes, 45,000 volunteers will work tirelessly to ensure the smooth running of the Games. The logistics are staggering: the Athletes’ Village alone will serve over 600,000 meals each day to fuel the world’s elite sportspeople.
And speaking of numbers, here’s a fun fact for you: the Olympics will distribute 300,000 condoms, which works out to about two per day for each athlete. This initiative aims to promote sexual health and prevent STIs among the world’s fittest individuals.
The global reach of these Games is set to be astronomical. Billions of viewers worldwide will be tuning in, with an estimated 350,000 hours of television broadcast planned. The event will also host 20,000 accredited journalists who will make sure every moment is captured and shared with the world.
Opening Ceremony: What You Should Know
The Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, scheduled for 26 July at 18:30 BST, is set to redefine Olympic tradition. For the very first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the ceremony will take place outside of a stadium — more specifically along the Seine, the river that has been the lifeblood of Paris for centuries.
We’ll see the traditional athletes’ parade reimagined as a fleet of boats, each carrying a national delegation. The procession will cross through the heart of Paris, passing close to Notre-Dame and the Louvre, before culminating at the Trocadéro, near the Eiffel Tower.
Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director, has been tight-lipped about specific details, but promises a spectacle that will honour both Olympic tradition and Parisian culture. Choreographer Maud Le Pladec has revealed that dancers will adorn every bridge along the route, while costume director Daphne Burki and her team have created an impressive 3,000 costumes for the performers.
This ceremony aims to be the most accessible in Olympic history, in full liberté, égalité, Olympicité style. Eighty giant screens and strategically placed speakers will allow unprecedented public access to the event. It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of spectators will be able to experience the ceremony first-hand, an impossible achievement with a traditional stadium parade.
New and Returning Sports
The IOC’s idea for the Paris 2024 programme is clear: appeal to younger audiences and embrace evolving sporting trends.
Breaking, often referred to as breakdancing, will make its Olympic debut in Paris. This street dance style, born in the 1970s Bronx, will see 16 B-Boys and 16 B-Girls compete in separate one-day competitions. The events, scheduled for 9 and 10 August, will take place in the heart of Paris at Place de la Concorde, alongside other urban sports.
Returning for their second Olympic appearance are surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, and 3×3 basketball. These sports, which debuted in Tokyo 2020, have been retained to continue engaging younger audiences and bring a diverse range of athletic skills.
You might wonder… how can one even surf in Paris? That’s a good question, and one for which we have the answer. Surfing will take place far from Paris, on the waves of Tahiti in French Polynesia, about 15,000 kilometres from the host city.
Skateboarding will feature both street and park events for men and women, with finals taking place between 27-28 July and 6-7 August. Sport climbing has expanded its programme, now offering a speed event alongside the combined bouldering and lead event.
3×3 basketball, the fast-paced half-court version of the game, returns with both men’s and women’s tournaments. The USA men’s team, led by former BYU star Jimmer Fredette, will be looking to claim their first gold in this event after failing to qualify for Tokyo. Meanwhile, the US women’s team aims to defend their championship title.
READ MORE: Basketball Olympics 2024: Schedule, Team Previews, and Previous Winners
New Olympic Events
Several established Olympic sports will introduce new events in Paris, adding some freshness to familiar disciplines we already had the pleasure to watch and follow.
Kayak cross makes its Olympic debut. This event will see four kayakers race against each other, navigating a course of downstream and upstream gates. It marks the first time in Olympic canoe slalom that athletes will race directly against each other rather than against the clock.
Artistic swimming will welcome men to the competition for the very first time, marking a significant step towards gender equality in the sport.
Intrack and field, the new mixed marathon race walk relay has been added to the programme, replacing the men’s 50km race walk.
Boxing sees a reshuffling of weight classes, with a new women’s category added and a men’s category removed, resulting in seven men’s and six women’s weight classes.
Which Sports Were Removed From The Programme?
As new sports join the Olympic family, others must depart. Karate, which made its Olympic debut in Tokyo 2020, will not feature in Paris 2024. This decision has disappointed some nations, particularly Spain, a world leader in the sport. The IOC sports director, Kit McConnell, explained that the exclusion was part of an effort to balance traditional disciplines with rapidly growing sports.
Baseball and softball also find themselves out of the Paris 2024 programme. Baseball debuted as a medal sport in Barcelona 1992 and featured in four subsequent Games before being excluded. It made a brief return in Tokyo 2020 but will not appear in Paris. Softball, which first appeared in the 1996 Atlanta Games and continued until Beijing 2008, shared baseball’s return in Tokyo but will likewise be absent in Paris.
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