Seb Coe: Expect huge athletics party in Paris
Nation Media Group’s Elias Makori (left) with a delegation from World Athletics and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games organizing committee visit the Paris 2024 Olympic Village construction site in St Denis, Paris in June, 2023.
What you need to know:
- For the Paralympics, more sporting disciplines will be accommodated in this transformed venue.
- Team Kenya will arrive in France early, and set up camp in the city of Miramas, some 740 kilometres south of Paris to acclimatize ahead of the Olympic Games.
World Athletics chiefs believe next year’s Paris Olympic Games will reignite the passion that was somewhat subdued by the coronavirus-affected Tokyo Games in 2021.
And as the world prepares to mark exactly one year to the opening of the Paris 2024 Games tomorrow, organisers are upbeat and confident that they remain on track, and on budget in preparations.
The French capital will host the Olympic Games from July 26 to August 11, 2024, with 14,000 athletes expected for the Olympics and a further 6,000 for the Paralympic Games that will run from August 28 to September 8.
World Athletics President Seb Coe and Chief Executive Officer Jon Ridgeon — both of them former Olympians — remain positive that Paris will be one huge party for the sport after the challenges of Tokyo and coming soon after next month’s 40th anniversary World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
“In exactly one year’s time, the eyes of the world will be firmly set on Paris — the city of light — as it hosts the 2024 Olympic Summer Games. As we reach this milestone, athletics is revelling in an exceptionally strong start to the international season, in which we have witnessed a flurry of awe-inspiring and record-breaking performances,” Coe said in a statement issued to commemorate the one year countdown to the Paris Games.
“Our athletes are now charging towards next month’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest, the last global championships before they turn their attention to the Paris Olympics.
“After the necessary austerity of the Tokyo Games, there is high anticipation of a return to a full global celebration of the Games and the athletes in Paris.
“We look forward to welcoming hundreds of thousands of spectators to our road events on the streets of Paris and to our stadium venue, the Stade de France,” Coe, a double Olympic champion in the 1,500 metres (Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984) added in the statement made available to Nation Sport.
Ridgeon — like Coe a British Olympian — led a delegation from World Athletics, that included selected global journalists, on a tour of the Paris venues last month and is happy with the progress made by the French hosts.
Marion Le Paul, the Deputy General Manager at the Olympic Works Delivery Company, Ouvrages (right) and Laurent Michaud, Director of the Olympic and Paralympic Villages, explain to journalists progress in the construction of the Paris 2024 Olympic Village in St Denis, Paris, in June, 2023.
“Following a visit to Paris last month, I am thrilled with the progress being made on our key venues for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games including the iconic Stade de France which will host 10 days of athletics competition,” Ridgeon, a silver medalist in the 110m hurdles at the 1987 World Championships in Rome, said.
“Our road events will have an appropriately stunning backdrop, taking in some of Paris’ most recognisable monuments as our athletes race through the streets of the city,” he added.
“As an Olympian, I am equally impressed with the Athletes Village and the facilities that will be made available there to our athletes during the Games.
“The fact that you can see the Stade de France from the village, only two kilometres away, will be inspirational for our athletes and the proximity of these two locations will help them to arrive at the stadium ready to perform at their best.”
President of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Tony Estanguet (right), flanked by France's Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera (left), addresses media next to the River Seine on July 17, 2023, during a parade to test "maneuvers", "distances", "duration" and "video capture" of the future opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in 2024. For this mini-rehearsal, the total fleet is made up of 57 boats, 39 representing the delegations - slightly less than half as many as for D-Day in 2024 - and 18 others providing support (assistance, first aid) as well as Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), the Olympic TV broadcaster.
The Paris 2024 Olympic Village is located seven kilometres from central Paris on the shores of River Seine which will also host the Games’ opening ceremony exactly a year from now on Friday, July 26, 2024.
The Olympic Village will be the epicentre for the Paris 2024 infrastructure and is being set up in a 51-hectare space that will remain one of the legacies of the Paris Games.
Marion Le Paul, the Deputy General Manager at the Olympic Works Delivery Company Ouvrages is confident that everything is on track for the Games.
Ouvrages is working in partnership with SOLIDEO which is the public body responsible for delivering the Olympic and Paralympic infrastructure. She told Nation Sport that construction is on time, and on budget.
“We are on time, we are on budget and we have a very ambitious mission for all the facilities – especially the swimming pool project and the Olympic and Paralympic Villages (which are all being built from scratch),” she said. “After the Olympics, it (Olympic Village) will be a new village in Paris that will welcome 6,000 new inhabitants and 6,000 workers.”
Le Paul invited Kenyan Olympic and Paralympic delegations to the Olympic Village saying they will enjoy first-class, environmentally-friendly accommodation during the Games.
“They will enjoy the rooms, because they are not too hot or too cold and there will be a lot of trees planted, and with the restaurant in the middle of the Village and also the Seine River close by, the atmosphere will be good for a party once the athletes have their Olympic medals.”
Among the unique features of at the Olympic Village is a basketball training court which will be used by tournament finalists only, along with further facilities for weightlifting, wrestling and fencing developed within an existing film studio block.
“The preliminaries for basketball will be in Lille and the finals in Paris, so the qualified teams will be hosted in the Paris Olympic Village and will train in the new court and in the movie making studios that have been transformed into two basketball courts, with facilities also for fencing, wrestling and weightlifting,” Laurent Michaud, Director of the Olympic and Paralympic Villages told Nation Sport in Paris.
For the Paralympics, more sporting disciplines will be accommodated in this transformed venue.
Team Kenya will arrive in France early, and set up camp in the city of Miramas, some 740 kilometres south of Paris to acclimatize ahead of the Olympic Games.
