Paris Looks Beyond COVID for Hosting 2024 Olympic Games

France laid down the red carpet for the next Olympic flag on Monday. Paris, the capital of France, will be hosting the next 2024 Summer Games promising to make the event open to the masses after Tokyo Olympics was held behind closed doors.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo waved the Olympic flag, that was handed over to her during the handover ceremony at Tokoyo Olympics, as she returned to the country with 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 has learnt a lot from the recent Tokyo Olympics, she added.

The 2020 Olympics were postponed by a year and overshadowed by severe Covid-19 countermeasures as contagious variations resurfaced around the world, falling short of the success and financial windfall Japan had hoped for.

At the handover ceremony on Sunday, Paris promised to give a different experience.

“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.

Bringing the games closer to the people will pose security risks in a country where Islamist terrorists and jihadist-inspired assailants have carried out waves of strikes in recent years. More than 250 individuals have died as a result of the attack.

In a pursuit to surpassing the old made for TV format, organizers are planning to take the 2024 Games opening ceremony to the very heart of the city.

It will be for the first time in history that amateurs will also take part 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.

There is no saying that whether the world will conquer the pandemic during the next three years. Estanguet said that Paris 2024 has been working on its own contingency plans.

Until now, nothing has been going in the favor of Paris, as the wind stopped the city to wave a giant flag from the Eiffel Tower and set the first-ever world record for the 2024 Games.

Also Read

Tokyo Olympics Ends, US Beats China In Medals Race

The Olympics, which began on July 23 in the Japanese capital, Tokyo,...