The Games are over. And indeed over. In Paris, the dismantling of the temporary sites has begun. It will continue until the end of autumn. But the time for rewards and medals is still dragging on, as if France could not bring itself to write the word end.
The athletes' parade, an idea by Emmanuel Macron set to music by the Paris 2024 COJO, brought together more than 14 spectators on Saturday, September 70.000 on the Champs-Élysées and around the Arc de Triomphe. No fewer than 300 medal-winning French Olympic and Paralympic athletes were honored. It also paid tribute to all the French people – volunteers, professionals and supporters – involved in one way or another in the success of the Games. Cool.
Thomas Bach was there. The future ex-president of the IOC took one of his last walkabouts before handing over the keys to his vast office at the Olympic House in Lausanne next June. The German leader also took the opportunity to engage in an exercise that years of practice have made him an expert at: handing out trophies and medals.
The IOC announced it the same day: Thomas Bach presented the Olympic Cup to the French people on Saturday, September 14, at the height of the jubilation. No less. The Olympic Cup? The least known of the distinctions of the institution with the rings was created in 1906 by Pierre de Coubertin. It is " traditionally awarded to organisations or communities for their exceptional commitment to sport and the Olympic values”, explains the instance.
For the occasion, the IOC pushed the walls to the point of making them fall, expanding the notion of community to an entire people. Sixty-eight million French people who can today boast of holding a fragment of a cup invented by Pierre de Coubertin and awarded by Thomas Bach.
Pragmatically, the German leader symbolically handed it over to a group of four volunteers and supporters. representing the French people". Then he used his always impeccable French to address the crowd with these words: “ The French people have been a true Olympic audience. You have embraced the Olympic values. You have fallen in love with the Olympic Games, and we have fallen in love with all of you. Thank you, France!
The French public, the IOC congratulated and thanked them. The Paris 2024 COJO, for its part, measured it. It put into figures the tremendous popular success, on the competition sites but also everywhere else, of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The exercise could have been tedious. It turned out to be very rewarding.
Tony Estanguet explained it at the end of last week during a press conference: the Paris 2024 Games have sold precisely 12.132.647 tickets. A record that breaks down as follows: 9.556.792 for the Olympic Games, 2.575.855 for the Paralympics.
In addition to these paying spectators, there were a good million people gathered in the streets of Paris to watch the cycling road races for free.
The other figures displayed before him by Tony Estanguet do not all reach the same dizzying heights, but most of them constitute Olympic or Paralympic records.
In athletics, the Olympic competitions at the Stade de France have surpassed the previously unseen threshold of one million spectators. The session on Saturday 7 September, the last of the Paralympic Games, topped the attendance charts with 67.500 spectators. This is a Paralympic record for all sports.
In basketball, a European women's record was broken with over 27.000 people for a preliminary round match in Lille. In handball, an attendance of 26.000 spectators, also in Lille, was authenticated as a world record. In women's rugby sevens, the presence of 7 fans at the Stade de France was recorded as another world record.
In swimming, the Paralympic competitions brought together 263.000 paying spectators. A record, obviously.
On television, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games were watched by 60 million French people, with a peak audience of 14,5 million for Léon Marchand's fourth gold medal. For the Paralympic Games, 49 million people tuned in to watch the games, including 5,3 million for the blind football final.
Digital? A hit, naturally. More than 2,6 billion views on the Paris 2024 sites, 300 million users of the IOC's site, Olympics.com. Come on, two last figures before closing: 7,5 million people in the celebration zones all over France, 8 million spectators along the flame's route. No more.
