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Flying the Olympic flag, Paris looks beyond Covid for 2024 Games
President of the Paris Organising Committee of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Tony Estanguet (centre left) stands next to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo as they wave the Olympic flag marking the handover from Japan to the next Games in Paris 2024, as they pose with the French athletes returning from the Tokyo Olympic 2020/2021 games. — AFP
Paris - 'The 2024 games would be something very positive for our country. They come at a good moment'
France rolled out the red carpet for the Olympic flag on Monday, with the host of the next 2024 Summer Games promising to make the sporting spectacle open to the masses after a pandemic-hit Tokyo Games held behind closed doors.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo waved the flag which she was handed in Tokyo during the handover ceremony as she stepped out of the aircraft bringing home some of the country’s last athletes.
The 2024 games would be “something very positive for our country. They come at a good moment,” Hidalgo told reporters.
Paris she said had learned many lessons from Tokyo’s experience.
Delayed by a year and upended by strict Covid-19 countermeasures as contagious variants surged back around the world, the 2020 Games fell short of the triumph and financial windfall Japan had wanted.
At Sunday’s handover ceremony, Paris sought to change the tone. Several thousand sports fans thronged a fan zone in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, whooping and cheering as some Tokyo medallists bounced onstage to a backtrack of blaring rock music.
“We want to find ways to open the games to the people,” Paris Games chief Tony Estanguet said on Friday.
“Our focus is on taking sport out of the traditional spaces and putting competition at the heart of the city’s most famous landmarks,” Estanguet, a three-time Olympic canoe champion, added.
In a nod to breaking with an old made-for-TV format, organisers of the Paris 2024 games have for the past year been working on taking the opening ceremony out of the Olympic stadium and into the heart of Paris.
For the first time, amateur runners will participate in the marathon, road-biking enthusiasts will cycle the course soon after the Olympians and sailing enthusiasts may be able to do battle in real-time with their sporting heroes.
“We need to balance the tradition of the Olympics with creativity and innovation,” Estanguet has said.
No-one knows if the world will have conquered the pandemic in three years time. Estanguet told Reuters in February that Paris 2024 was working on its own contingency plans.
Already not everything has gone Paris’ way. The city’s bid to fly a giant flag from the Eiffel Tower and set a first world record for the 2024 Games was thwarted on Sunday by the wind.
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