<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/664/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/556/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/600/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/664/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/700/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/19/0/0/5559/3707/800/0/75/0/703ce50_5042329-01-06.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Athletes during the paratriathlon " test="" event"="" mixed="" relay="" at="" the="" paris="" games="" venue,="" august="" 19,="" 2023."="" width="100%" height="auto">
Same venues, same codes, same symbols, same emblems. The Paris 2024 Organizing Committee (COJOP) keeps repeating it: The Paralympic Games (August 28 to September 8, 2024) have the "same project and the same ambition" as the Olympic Games (July 26 to August 11, 2024) without being a copy-paste. "The sports and athletes will be different, but they will share a common history by carrying the same flag," said Julie Matikhine.
To illustrate her point, the Paris 2024 brand director has spoken of the "Olympics return match," a sort of second round that will complete the great story begun a month earlier, with its own singularity, but just as many sporting emotions. "It's a call to the public. We want there to be a sense of communion behind the athletes," said Michaël Aloïsio, COJOP's deputy general manager.
As well as making a success of the event, the organizing committee wants to create momentum, raise awareness and mobilize public figures on the subject of inclusion. As Monday, August 28, marks "D - 1 year" to the kick-off of the Paralympic Games, where does Paris stand?
Up to 2,500 wheelchair-bound spectators are expected at the competition venues on each day of the Paralympic Games – a figure that rises to 4,000 for the Olympic Games. But "France is lagging far behind" in terms of accessibility, said Patrice Tripoteau, Deputy Director General of APF France handicap, in April.
This starts with public transport. While 100% of Paris streetcars and buses are accessible to people with disabilities, only 9% of metro lines are. By summer 2024, 14% of them should be, as should 93% of the Paris rail network (currently 66%) and 89% (compared with 75% today) of the Île-de-France rail network.
In addition, Paris 2024 is planning to provide reserved parking for wheelchair users (UFR) so that they can use their own adapted cars, as well as accessible cabs. Specific shuttles, with a capacity of three to four people with their companion and bookable after the purchase of a UFR ticket, will also be available. They will depart from the main Paris train stations and transport users to the site entrance.
The para-athletes will also have their own special arrangements, with special routes, some of them with converted buses that can accommodate six wheelchair users. Around 1,000 drivers will be mobilized to transport them, and 250 converted vehicles will be used for the opening ceremony.
All tickets for Paralympic events – as well as the opening and closing ceremonies – go on sale individually on October 9. Each person will be able to buy up to 30 tickets for the 11 days of competition, with a limit of 10 per event and four for the opening ceremony.
In addition, two discovery passes at €24 will be available. The first, called the Discovery Pass - Paris Centre will give access for one day to the Grand Palais, the Champ-de-Mars Arena, the Tour-Eiffel stadium and the Invalides. The second, Discovery Pass - Paris South, will give access to boccia and goalball, as well as para-table tennis. The family offer, meanwhile, will offer two children's tickets at €10 for every two standard tickets purchased.
Spectator estimates have been reduced owing to insufficient capacity: Around 2.8 million tickets are expected to go on sale, compared with the 3.5 million originally announced. Paris 2024 promises that 80% of them will be at €50 or less, while the price range will go from €15 to €100.
A much larger budget will be required to attend the opening and closing ceremonies, which will cost between €150 and €700 and between €45 and €450 respectively. Finally, the French government will distribute 17,400 tickets free of charge to disabled people and their companions.
"Raising awareness" is the mantra of all Paralympic Games stakeholders. To this end, people required to work at the competition venues and other event-related infrastructures are being encouraged to undergo training to "know how to analyze a person's needs and expectations based on their disability," said Ludivine Munos, three-time Paralympic swimming champion and member of the organizing committee. "The country will wake up differently after 11 days of being confronted with disability," said Elie Patrigeon, General Manager of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee. More than just the Games, the aim is to "make visible people who are structurally invisible."
This aim includes sports facilities: The aquatic center in Aulnay-sous-Bois (department of Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris) will be equipped with facilities for guide dogs. This also extends to non-sport facilities: To manage the unevenness of the Promenade Cesaria-Evora in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, ramps will be installed to facilitate access.
The structure of the apartments in the athletes' village, located to the north of Paris, straddling the Paris suburbs of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L'Île-Saint-Denis, was also designed "by and for people with disabilities," said Antoine Du Souich, Director of Strategy and Innovation at the company delivering the Olympic facilities. From showers with no protrusion – a projection that protrudes from a surface – to open spaces in the bedrooms allowing wheelchair maneuvering (1.5 m diameter rotation circle), these apartments, unprecedented in their design, should serve as a model for the future of real estate.
But before we start thinking about what comes after the Paralympics, there's just under a year left to complete all the work begun in 2017.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.