As you’d be well aware Paris is the Olympics 2024 host city and the opening ceremony is just hours away. To get into the Olympic spirit, we share some facts about the Paris Olympics 2024. Even if you’re not into sports, you’re bound to find something interesting in this list! Ready, set, go!
- Paris has hosted the Olympics twice before, in 1900 and in 1924.
- The first Olympic games held in Paris included hot air ballooning races, coinciding with the Grand Exposition de Paris that year.
- The Paris Olympics opening ceremony is not taking place in the Olympic stadium for the first time in Olympic history. Instead, it will be but along the iconic River Seine.
- Spectators will watch the opening ceremony along a 6km section of the banks of the River Seine.
- Two non-French artists are expected to perform a duet at the Paris 2024 Olympic games opening ceremony: Lady Gaga and Céline Dion are reportedly going to perform Piaf’s La Vie en Rose
- Malian R&B star Aya Nakamura, the most-listened to French-speaking singer in the world at the moment, is widely expected to be performing.
- There will be 32 sports at the 2024 Olympics.
- A new sport to the Olympics is breaking, which you may know better as breakdancing.
- The rooms at the Athletes Village do not have air-conditioning, opting instead for geothermal cooling, which is under floor cooling. This caused a lot of controversy, resulting in portable ai-conditioners being available for hire.
- The athletes will have over 500 recipes to choose from separated into six cuisines: two international cuisines, two French cuisines, one Asian and one African and Caribbean cuisine.
- Up to 40,000 meals will be served per day at the Olympic Village.
- Athletes can also shape their own baguettes at the Grab&Go in the Olympic Village.
- Spectators in two venues will be sitting on chairs made out of plastic waste in Le Pavé project, which came from a student project by 3 students.
- Only one permanent sports facility has been built for the 2024 games: the Olympic Aquatic Centre which will be a public teaching, training and event centre post-games.
- Paris 2024 will also be the first gender equal Olympic and Paralympic Games.
- Surfing won’t happen on the French mainland but off the coast of Teahupo’o, in Tahiti in French Polynesia. Sailing and soccer will also be held outside of Paris, in the Southern city of Marseille.
- The Paris 2024 mascots are called Phryges and are based on the bonnet phyrgien, a red hat associated with liberty and republicanism since it was adopted by revolutionaries during the French Revolution. The hat itself has origins in a region then called Phyrgia, in what is now known as Turkey.
- The mascots were made by Doudou et Compagnie factory based in Guerche-en-Bretagne, in Brittany.
- The jeweller, Chaumet, part of the LVMH group, was chosen to design the medals and did so in collaboration with the Paris 2024 Athlete’s Commission.
- Each Paris 2024 Olympic medal contains a piece of the Eiffel Tower: The Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel allowed iron pieces removed when the Tower was renovated to modernise the elevators, that had since been carefully preserved to be used.
If you’re not into the Olympics and are looking for something else to watch, don’t miss these films, series and documentaries leaving SBS on Demand this month.
