Paris Paralympics 2024 Live Updates: Sumit Antil, Bhagyashri Jadhav lead the Indian contingent out at the Opening Ceremony for Paris 2024. (Screengrab via JioCinema)
Paris Paralympics 2024 Highlights: Just weeks after hosting the Olympics, Paris inaugurated the 2024 Paralympics on Wednesday with a nearly four-hour-long opening ceremony in the heart of the city. Sumit Antil and Bhagyashri Jadhav led the Indian contingent out at the ceremony.
Against the backdrop of a setting sun, thousands of athletes paraded down the famed Champs-Elysées avenue to Place de la Concorde in central Paris where French President Emmanuel Macron officially declared the Paralympic Games open.
About 50,000 people watched the ceremony in stands built around the iconic square, which is the biggest in Paris and is visible from afar because of its ancient Egyptian Obelisk. Accessibility for athletes in wheelchairs was facilitated with strips of asphalt laid along the avenue and placed over the square.
More than 4,000 athletes with physical, visual and intellectual impairments will compete in 22 sports from Thursday until Sept. 8. Organizers say more than 2 million of the 2.8 million tickets have been sold for the various Paralympic events.
The opening ceremony was held outside the confines of a stadium, just like when the Olympics opened in the city on July 26. Fighter planes flew overhead, leaving red-white-and blue vapors in the colors of the French national flag, before the delegations entered the square in alphabetical order.
Some delegations were huge — more than 250 athletes from Brazil — and some were tiny — less than a handful from Barbados and just three from Myanmar.
Ukraine’s delegation got a loud cheer and some of the crowd stood to applaud them. (Inputs from AP)
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Javelin to shooting, India targets medal surge as Paralympic Games start
At Rio 2016, India’s para Olympians returned home with four medals, two more than the able-bodied athletes. The tally jumped to 19 medals at the next Summer Games at Tokyo in 2021. As the 2024 Paralympic Games gets underway with the opening ceremony in Paris on Wednesday, India will be looking to continue this upward trajectory.
Hopes are high as the largest-ever para-contingent of 84 athletes will be seen at venues where India got five medals earlier this month. Double paralympic medalist Devendra Jhajharia, who is now president of the Paralympic Committee of India, has a number in mind when he speculates on India’s medal count. READ MORE
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First uploaded on: 28-08-2024 at 22:29 IST
