“The most beautiful Games in History”: Paris 2024 is over, time for the last “party” in the Stade de France

Une dernière belle fête au Stade de France, comme pour clôturer les Jeux Olympiques. MAXPPP – Franck Dubray

La cérémonie de clôture des Jeux Paralympiques ce dimanche soir marque la fin de l'aventure Paris 2024.

With a final "party" with electro sounds at the Stade de France, Paris definitively closes its first Paralympic Games on Sunday, "the most beautiful in History" according to its participants, hoping to leave a legacy regarding the way in which disability is viewed and taken into consideration.

In the medal table, China finished first in this edition, for the sixth consecutive time, with 94 titles (220 medals), ahead of Great Britain (49 gold) and the United States (36 gold). It is now time for a final celebration. No fewer than 24 DJs from all generations, from Jean-Michel Jarre to Kavinsky, embodying the “French Touch”, an internationally renowned electro scene – are gathered at the Stade de France, where around 60,000 spectators are getting ready to vibrate and cheer the 4,400 or so para-athletes who will parade one last time.

Aurélie Aubert and Tanguy De La Forest flag bearers

Paralympic Boccia champion Aurélie Aubert and para-sport shooting champion Tanguy De La Forest will be the French flag bearers for this event. The flame cauldron at the Tuileries will be extinguished and then the Seine-Saint-Denis stadium will be transformed into a giant dancefloor for an hour of musical entertainment, around the theme “Paris is a party”. The torch will be passed to Los Angeles, which will host the next Games in 2028.

Twelve years after the founding London Paralympics, in view of their popular and media success, from now on "the Games of reference will be the Paris-2024 Games", declared the president of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee Marie-Amélie Le Fur at a press conference on Sunday. A formula also taken up by the president of the International Paralympic Committee Andrew Parsons.

Top 8 assured

“For all the participants, athletes, staff, foreign observers, these are the greatest Paralympic Games in history”, said the head of mission of the French delegation Michael Jeremiasz. The enthusiasm was there, despite the start of the school year between the two weeks of competition. “We have exceeded 2.5 million tickets sold (…) but we are not quite at 2.6″, said Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee. London-2012 had done slightly better with 2.7 million tickets sold.

In terms of media coverage, 165 television channels followed the event, a record. Also a record for the number of delegations involved, 168.

On the sporting front, France returned to the Top 8 with 75 medals including 19 gold, its best ranking since 2000. “What remains for us to do is to endure over time“, says Marie-Amélie Le Fur, very satisfied despite sports that have “not been up to par”, citing in particular the need to“move up in athletics” which has the most events and where the Blues only brought back five medals, none of which were gold. Marie-Amélie Le Fur also hopes to further “feminize” the French team, which had 82 women out of 237 athletes entered. Other disciplines, such as team sports, are also part of the areas for improvement to imitate blind football, the only one of these disciplines to have won medals in Paris.

“Not an enchanted parenthesis”

Para-cycling (28 medals on track and road) and para-swimming (14) were by far the most successful for the French team. Several major international champions also distinguished themselves, including China's Yuyan Jiang and Belarus' Ihar Boki in para-swimming, the two most decorated athletes in Paris with seven and five gold medals won respectively.

It remains to be seen whether these Paris Games will leave a solid legacy in terms of taking into account the rights of people with disabilities. For Michael Jeremiasz, “we can no longer go backwards”. The latter hopes that the Paralympics “will contribute to normalizing the way we look at others, that the State and the government feel obliged to do the job and that we accelerate this transformation, that all the projects to access this citizenship are put in place”, mentioning in particular access to employment. “We must ensure that this is not an enchanted interlude”, he warns because “it would be more serious than if we had not organized the Games”.

The president of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, spoke again on Sunday about the “metro for all” project, “the biggest transport challenge in the Region over the coming decades“, while the very old Parisian network is criticized for its lack of accessibility. A vast and costly project, the feasibility of which still needs to be discussed.

But in the meantime, let's party!