PARIS – French president Emmanuel Macron declared the Paralympic Games open on Wednesday after a glorious ceremony in which competitors were celebrated by joyful volunteers and spectators on a sweet summer night.
The event on the Champs Elysees and the Place de la Concorde was the first Paralympics curtain-raiser to be held outside a stadium.
Security was tight, with some 15,000 law enforcement officers on site, but there was a light summer feeling to the evening as the sun slowly set on the French capital.
“Dear athletes, welcome to the country of love and revolution. Rest assured, tonight, no Storming of the Bastille, no guillotine, because tonight the most beautiful revolution starts—the paralympic revolution,” Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet said in his speech.
“It’s a sweet revolution that will change all of us deeply.”
The live show started at the foot of the obelisk in Place de la Concorde with Canadian musician, songwriter, and producer Chilly Gonzales on the piano.
Artists with disabilities and impairments screamed a countdown and French singer Christine and the Queens delivered a pop rendition of Edith Piaf’s ‘Je ne regrette rien’.
Parade
The event, directed by Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman and featuring 500 artists, was named “Paradox, from discord to concord”, in a thinly-veiled reference to the Place de la Concorde, where the sold-out ceremony ended in front of more than 50,000 spectators.
The 168-delegation athletes’ parade started from the bottom of the Champs Elysees in a festive atmosphere with volunteers cheering and dancing.
As the French, who closed the parade, reached the square, Yann Tiersen’s theme of Amelie was played on the loudspeaker before the crowd chanted ‘Allez Les Bleus’ with the scintillating Eiffel Tower in the background.
Last month’s Olympics opening ceremony was held in pouring rain which failed to dampen the enthusiasm of spectators along the Seine River. It went without a security glitch, though it also triggered controversy over a tableau that appeared to parody Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’.
The Paralympic flag was carried by Briton John McFall, who won a 100-metre bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Paralympics before becoming the first person with a physical disability to be effectively cleared for future missions by the European Space Agency.
After a relay of the torch through the Jardin des Tuileries, the cauldron, 17 days after the Olympics ended, was lit again near the Louvre Museum by five French paralympic athletes—Alexis Hanquinquant (triathlon), Nantenin Keita (athletics), Elodie Lorandi (swimming), Charles-Antoine Kouakou (athletics) and Fabien Lamirault (table tennis).
The ceremony ended with fireworks and another cover by Christine and the Queens, of Patrick Hernandez’s hit of 1978 ‘Born to be Alive’, before Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’ resonated around Place de la Concorde.
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