Who says return of the Games says return of the flame. Paris 2024 keeps repeating it: the Paralympic Games (JP) – from August 28 to September 8 – will be the ” return match “ of the Olympic Games (OG), which will be held from July 26 to August 11, with the “same project and the same ambition”. As for the Olympic Games, the flame, this time Paralympic, will open the celebrations.
If the Olympic flame will crisscross French territory for three months from May 2024, the Paralympic torch relay will be more intense since it will cross all regions of France in just four days, from August 25 to 28 2024. The Organizing Committee (Cojop) unveiled its route on Friday November 10.
“While the flame of the Olympic Games will be extinguished at the Olympic Closing Ceremony, the flame of the Paralympic Games will be ignited in Stoke Mandeville”, announces Paris 2024. This village, located northwest of London, is the symbolic cradle of Paralympic sport. It was in his hospital that the German neurologist Ludwig Guttmann organized, in parallel with the London Olympic Games in 1948, a sports competition for veterans of the Second World War with spinal cord injuries to accelerate their recovery. The ninth edition of these Games – called the “World Wheelchair and Amputee Games” then the “Stoke Mandeville International Games” – in 1960 is considered the first Paralympic Games.
Fifty cities committed to sport for all
The flame will then arrive in the host country via the Channel Tunnel. The handover ceremony will take place on August 25, halfway between the United Kingdom and France, where twenty-four English athletes will be joined by twenty-four French athletes. Upon its arrival on the French coast at Calais, the flame will split into twelve flames. Their number corresponds to the duration of these first Summer Paralympic Games organized in France: the day of lighting the cauldron and the eleven days of competition.
Thus, unlike the Olympic flame, several Paralympic flames will be able to shine simultaneously, which will make it possible to pass through fifty cities, spread across all regions. They will each take their own path before gathering in Paris on August 28. The cauldron will then be lit during the opening ceremony of the Games.
The journey of the twelve flames “will highlight cities that are committed to greater inclusion in sport”, details the organization. These were identified in consultation with the French Paralympic and Sports Committee. Among them, Rouen, Chartres and Troyes support the practice of sport for all and offer, for example, para tennis, adapted baseball and sledge hockey. The Paralympic flame will be carried by a thousand “scouts”, selected between June and October 2023 on the basis of their sporting, territorial or solidarity commitments.
From the Champs-Elysées to Concorde
Eight hundred of them will carry the flame individually, while the other two hundred will embark on collective relays made up of twenty-four participants each. Some of these collective relays are organized by the French sports movement with the aim of making visible various players in parasport, such as former Paralympians and young parasporters but also those around people with disabilities.
The relay will allow “to open minds around parasport and promote its practice to a wide audience”, estimates para-athlete Dimitri Pavadé. The silver medalist at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in long jump will be one of the four “captains” of the torch bearers, alongside Mona Francis, European paratriathlon champion and Olympic swimming champions Laure and Florent Manaudou.
Like the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, on the Seine, for the first time in their history, the Paralympic Games will open outside of a stadium. On August 28, 2024, the parade of athletes will leave the Champs-Elysées to arrive at Place de la Concorde. “The world-famous sports sites but also the most beautiful Parisian monuments will highlight the performances of Paralympic athletes”announces Paris 2024.
Our selection of articles on the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games
Find all our content on the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games:
- The question of the presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes
The International Paralympic Committee changes course and opens the door to Russian athletes
The government steps on the accelerator to close the accessibility gap
Making physical and sporting activities accessible to all with the “Inclusive Club” program
Paris 2024 opening ceremony: public authorities are leaning towards around 300,000 spectators with free access
Efforts to train private security agents should not be enough to be there for the Games
Paris 2024: the use of the army to ensure the security of sites has been planned from 2019
The organizer of the Games draws on its reserves to ensure its budget is balanced
What the State and communities finance for the Olympic and Paralympic Games
- The preparation of French athletes
In Saint-Malo, French athletics mobilizes in the final Olympic straight
Bercy anticipates 138 Olympic and Paralympic medalists
Florent Manaudou: “At the 2024 Paris Olympics, we will have good results because we are at home, but we are not a sports country”
Senators are concerned about the “risks weighing” on the delivery of certain Olympic works
Making the Seine swimmable by 2024, the immense challenge to take on before the Paris Olympics
Opening of RATP buses to competition in Paris: the spread of the timetable until the end of 2026 approved by the Senate
The Olympics will mobilize 181,000 jobs, but we still have to fill them
- Seine-Saint-Denis and the Games
Seine-Saint-Denis, at the heart of the Paralympic marathon and para-cycling
“I feel like I’m going to see a lot of things that I’ve never seen, even from the street”
- Ongoing legal investigations
Winter Games 2030 and 2034: a Paris 2024 framework targeted by a complaint
One year before the Olympics, the specter of business hovers over Paris 2024
- The Olympic Torch Relay
Against a backdrop of social tensions, the Parisian route of the torch relay revealed
- Environmental issues
Olympic flying taxis deemed too noisy and too greedy by the Environmental Authority
The difficult challenge of the “green” Olympic Games
- The societal issues that the Games highlight
The government will finance the creation of 5,000 additional sports fields by the end of 2026
In Paris, the movement of second-hand booksellers suspended from “tests”
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games accelerate the transformation of North-East Paris
- The Games are not just Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis
Communities seeking a share of the “Olympics effect” with Games preparation centers
In Espalion, on the occasion of the Olympic Games, “we want to talk about our city, make it known”
“They came to see meumeus, they will have seen athletes”, the Verdun Fair at the time of the Games