This Friday, 26 July, will see the start of the 33rd Summer Olympics. Over the next few weeks, till 11th August, Paris—the main host city, and 16 other cities around France as well as Tahiti, a French overseas island, will see 800 sporting events. With this, Paris becomes only the second city in the world (apart from London) to host the Olympics for the third time. But it is a good long time since the last time it held the Games—a century to be exact!
The arrangements for the games are aimed at setting new benchmarks for quality, convenience, security and aesthetics. The 4-hour opening event will set the tone. The Paris 2024 opening ceremony will be unique in that it will not take place in a stadium. Instead, nearly a hundred boats will be deployed, which will carry thousands of competitors and other guests on a 6 km scenic route on the River Seine. The boats will be organized by country. Along the way, they will sail by the newly-repaired Notre-Dame Church, several bridges and other Paris landmarks, and will arrive at the Eiffel Tower. The banks of the river will be alive with music, dances and performances woven together into a 12-part show. The speeches and other formalities will all be a part of the overall presentation-experience, as the Games are declared open by French President Emmanuel Macron. The show will end around 9.30 pm when the sun sets.
About 10,500 athletes will participate in the ceremony, which will be attended by about 100 heads of state. There will be over 3 lakh spectators on the banks. 80 giant screens will be put up along the way.
Other unique aspects of the 2024 Olympics:
- This will be the first Olympics in history to achieve numerical gender parity, with an equal number of female and male athletes– 5250 men and 5250 women.
- Break-dancing: For the first time break-dancing will be introduced as a competitive event. There will be two events, one for men and the other for women.
- For the first time in history, the public will be part of Olympic experience! They will be allowed to run the same course of the Olympic marathon on the same day as the Olympians.
- The marathon swimming event and the swimming leg of the triathlon will be held in the River Seine, as they were in 1900. From 1923 until recently, swimming had been banned in the Seine due to water-quality issues, but the authorities have put in their utmost to clean up the river, and have assured that it is safe.
Most significantly, the organizers have vowed to make these the ‘greenest Olympics’, with efforts to make to make it carbon-neutral, and to cut the carbon footprint of the Olympics in half compared to previous editions. They will try to offset more emissions than the Games create. Some of the steps the organizers are taking include:
- The Olympics will run on 100% green energy generated from new sources of wind and solar energy, like windmills on the Normandy coast as well as solar panels on the roofs of venues in Paris.
- The Games will mainly use only existing venues and temporary structures, thereby avoiding the carbon footprint of building new ones. Only two new venues will be built–for aquatics and basketball.
- There will be no air conditioning in the athletes’ rooms. Instead, buildings in the athletes’ village have been designed with a cooling system drawing water from underground. Moreover, facades have been designed so they get little direct sun.
- The Village will use 94 per cent recycled materials and a special construction process that emits half as much carbon.
- After the games are over, the Athletes’ Village will allocate the houses for permanent residences.
- Athletes’ mattresses will be made from recycled fishing nets, and the base of the beds will be made from reinforced cardboard.
- Local farms will provide 80 per cent of the 13 million meals served during the Games, thereby lowering emissions.
- Most Olympic venues will be accessible by public transport, and 1000 km of new cycling lanes have been created. 3000 pay-and-use bikes will be deployed.
- About 2 lakh new trees have been planted.
Sounds like these Olympics are going to set new benchmarks! Appropriately so, for the motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter” or “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together” is not just about the sports events themselves, but every aspect of the Games!
Here is to the spirit of the Games!
–Meena
Millennial Matriarchs 