A unique opening ceremony, for the first time outside a stadium, on Place de la Concorde, opened the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in the most beautiful way. 168 delegations paraded around the largest square in Paris, transformed for one evening into a magnificent open-air arena. By walking around the Obelisk from the bottom of the Champs-Elysées, the Para athletes found a magnificent setting to highlight them for the whole world to see. At the end of the Ceremony, after having lit up again, the Cauldron illuminated by the Paralympic Flame returned to the sky of Paris.
In this exceptional show, Alexander Ekman, Artistic Director and choreographer of this opening ceremony, chosen by Thomas Jolly, Artistic Director of the ceremonies for the Paris 2024 Games, brought together 500 artists, including more than 140 dancers and 16 performers in a situation of disability. Place de la Concorde has transformed into a real scenographic setting, imagined by Bruno Delavenère, designed to offer new perspectives to this high place of Parisian heritage and to highlight the bodies, sublimated by the costumes of the young designer Louis Gabriel Nouchi. Victor le Masne (musical direction and original composition) on music and Thomas Dechandon (lighting design) on lighting also put their talent at the service of this memorable evening where 15.000 spectators gathered at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées, and 35.000 installed around the square. Five artistic paintings followed one another to convey a strong and poetic message around inclusion and the place of people with disabilities in society.
After the athletes' parade, two French Para athletes took the Paralympic oath: Sandrine Martinet, French Paralympic champion in Para judo in Rio in 2016 and triple bronze medalist and Arnaud Assoumani, French Paralympic champion in long jump in Beijing in 2008, twice silver medalist and twice bronze medalist. John Mc Fall, Paralympian and first astronaut with a disability to join the European Space Agency, brought the Paralympic flag to Place de la Concorde, alongside Damien Seguin, French skipper, three-time Paralympic medalist, first Paralympic athlete to have sailed solo around the world and 7th in the Vendée Globe 2020-2021.
A rich musical proposal full of emotions to accompany the ceremony
Several artists took turns on stage to set protocol elements and artistic sequences to music, all under the direction of Victor le Masne, composer and Musical Director of the Paris 2024 Ceremonies, accompanied by the Ensemble Matheus, an academy made up of young people instrumentalists and singers.
It was first of all the pianist Chilly Gonzales, with whom Victor le Masne has already collaborated extensively in the past, who accompanied on the piano the introductory sequence of the ceremony on an original work called “countdown” in order to illustrate the directed by Alexander Ekman composed of numerous grand pianos around which dancers performed. Christine and the Queens, an internationally recognized French artist, then performed a rereading of “non, je ne regrette rien”, by Edith Piaf, orchestrated by Victor Le Masne in a blown, jerky version, punctuated by breathing.
Myd, new head of the Ed Banger team, then set the Athletes' Parade around the Obelisk of Place de la Concorde to music with emblematic titles such as “So flute” by St Germain, “Quand je gauche” by Julien Clerc and “La Valse d’Amélie Poulain”, by Yann Tiersen. Lucky Love performed “My Ability”, an original and committed creation, accompanied by a Gospel choir. Luan Pommier, a true diamond in the rough from Guadeloupe, then introduced the Paralympic Anthem on the piano in a jazz and lyrical register. The arrival of the Paralympic Flame at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées was musically accompanied by Sébastien Tellier, who performed his famous piece “La Ritournelle”.
Christine and the Queens concluded the ceremony by covering “Born to be alive”, the disco classic by Patrick Hernandez, and arranged for the occasion by Victor Le Masne in an explosion of joy and color.
Twelve French and international Paralympic champions carried the flame until the Vasque took off, accompanied by a choreography punctuated by Ravel's Boléro in a more digital orchestration.
A link between Olympic and Paralympic athletes
Paris 2024 has always had the same ambition for the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games and wanted to strengthen the links between these two events, such as the presence of the Paralympic flag bearers in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and the the handover ceremony between Olympic athletes and Paralympic athletes during the Olympic closing ceremony.
To symbolize this link again, it was Florent Manaudou, Olympic standard bearer of the French delegation and winner of 2 bronze medals at the Paris 2024 Games, who brought the Flame to Place de la Concorde and passed it on to Michael Jeremiasz, Paralympic wheelchair tennis champion in Beijing in 2008 and today head of mission of the French delegation to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Paris 2024 then decided to honor three legends of Paralympic sport who will defend their colors at the Games to celebrate champions from around the world: Italian para fencer Bebe Vio, twice titled at the Tokyo Games and four times medalist in total, the American Oksana Masters, 17 times medalist at the Paralympic Games in four different Para sports (cross-country skiing, biathlon, cycling and rowing), and finally Markus Rehm, German Para athletics icon and three-time Paralympic jump champion. length.
Then three heavyweights of French para sport were chosen by Tony Estanguet, president of Paris 2024, to carry the Paralympic Flame inside the Jardin des Tuileries: Assia El Hannouni, the most successful French para athlete in para athletics with eight titles, including an exceptional quadruple title in Athens in 2004, Christian Lachaud, the most successful French Para athlete at the Paralympic Games, with 10 gold medals and fourteen medals in total in wheelchair fencing, and finally Béatrice Hess, the athlete most successful and medal-winning Frenchwoman, Olympic and Paralympic Games, summer and winter combined with 26 medals including 20 titles.
At the end of this Paralympic Torch Relay which saw 12 Flames travel through each region of mainland France in four days in front of 600.000 spectators, until they converged simultaneously on Paris, the Paris Vasque was set ablaze together by the last five bearers all from the French delegation to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games: Alexis Hanquinquant, Paralympic Para triathlon champion in Tokyo in 2021; Nantenin Keita, Paralympic 400m champion in Para athletics in Rio, in 2016 and quadruple medalist in total; Charles-Antoine Kouakou, reigning Paralympic champion in the 400m in the T20 category at Tokyo 2020, in Para athletics; Elodie Lorandi, the most decorated active athlete with seven medals in Para swimming, including a title in 400m freestyle in London, in 2012 and Fabien Lamirault, the most successful French athlete in the Paris 2024 delegation, quadruple gold medalist in Para table tennis and six-time medalist overall.
Around the basin which houses the Vasque imagined by Mathieu Lehanneur, 51 carriers selected by EDF, Premium Partner of Paris 2024, gathered to accompany its conflagration. It is in fact thanks to EDF, Premium Partner of Paris 2024, that the Paralympic Flame burns without fuel. A meticulous combination between a cloud of mist and beams of light, the Paralympic Flame sparkles with electricity as its sole energy.
An explosion of colors to conclude a conscious and festive ceremony
The Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games concluded with the sound of Born to Be Alive, revisited by Victor Le Masne and performed by Christine and the Queens, while at the same time, the Place de la Concorde was transformed into a giant canvas , on which the dancers painted a final colorful and creative work. The opening ceremony ended with this cheerful, enthusiastic and resolutely festive illustration of harmony carrying a message of hope. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games can begin!
