Paris 2024: More Inclusive Games

The Paris 2024 slogan, "Games Wide Open", reflected the desire of the organisers and the Olympic Movement to allow everyone to enjoy the Olympic experience to the full, while driving significant social impact.

As you might expect of the first fully gender-equal Games in history, with the exact same number of places for female and male athletes, Paris 2024 was also combating the prejudice that prevents women from playing the full and active role they yearn for in sport.

It is doing that in a number of ways. Firstly, Paris 2024 was breaking new ground with a more gender-equal sports programme. In addition to half of the 10,500 athletes being women, 28 out of 32 sports were gender-equal at the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad. Continuing the theme, there was a record 20 mixed events on the programme at Paris 2024. Given that 152 of the remaining 309 events were for female athletes, that means that they contested more than half of the medal events.

The 16-day schedule was also fairer towards women and allowed journalists to provide more balanced coverage across the genders. In a further development, the women’s marathon replaced the men’s as the traditional closing event of the Games. And in its continuing determination to give women greater visibility, the IOC was urging National Olympic Committees to include at least one female and one male athlete in their delegations and have one each jointly carry their flag at the Opening Ceremony.

Paris 2024’s commitment to inclusivity also extended to social projects using the power of sport to change lives. More than 1,100 of them were supported by the Paris 2024 Endowment Fund, to the tune of almost EUR 48 million, and were reaching 4.5 million people. As well as opening up sport to women and people with disabilities, these projects also promoted the positive impact it can have in education, equality, inclusion and workplace integration.

A key project in this respect was the introduction of 30 minutes of exercise per day in French schools. Started in September 2020 in primary schools in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, the programme was launched with the goal of being rolled out to all 36,500 elementary schools in France before the Games.

Using the power of the Games to change lives has also led to 460 local businesses from the social and solidarity economy (ESS) being contracted to provide construction, catering, furniture and laundry services, among other things. As well as offering access to these Olympic and Paralympic Games-related contracts, the ESS 2024 Programme also made guidance services, training and resources available to its participants. As of late March 2024, the initiative had provided some 2.6 million hours of work and training to previously unemployed people.

Furthermore, inclusivity meant mass participation at Paris 2024, with every citizen, visitor and spectator were given the opportunity to take part in a genuine celebration of sport.

Setting the tone was the first-ever Olympic Opening Ceremony held outside a stadium, on the River Seine, a truly spectacular event that 300,000 people were be able to attend.

For nine days during the Games, 120,000 spectators were able to get in on the act at the Champions Park, where they could meet the athletes, watch a parade of the previous day’s medal winners and enjoy cultural activities and events, as well as celebrations of the many sports on the Olympic programme. Fully accessible and free to enter, the park was located in the Trocadéro Gardens, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and provided one of the focal points of Paris 2024.

Then, as the Games reached their conclusion, some 40,000 people took on the ultimate Olympic challenge in the Marathon For All, held on the very same course as the men’s and women’s marathons and on the same day as the first of those races.

Like the marathon, the fight for inclusivity is no sprint, which is why Paris 2024 began its sports participation drive some time ago with Terre de Jeux 2024 certification. Awarded to over 4,700 cities, towns, villages regions and organisations across France, it has inspired millions to get out and play sport.

Removing the barriers faced by people with disabilities and making sure they have the same rights, access and opportunities as everyone else was another key facet of Paris 2024’s commitment to inclusivity.

The visitors with disabilities expected to travel to Paris could make use of dedicated transport services such as venue transfers for wheelchair users, one part of a 10-point national action plan to boost accessibility.

When they reached the venues, they were assisted by specially trained volunteers, while the visually impaired were able to follow the action at 13 venues thanks to an audio description service available in French and English on the Paris 2024 app. In total, 460 hours of listening were provided across both Olympic and Paralympic sports, from athletics to tennis and from boccia to blind football.

Spectators with visual impairments could also zoom in on the action with the help of low-vision headsets and use tactile tablets at six venues to follow a total of seven ball sports by touch as the ball moves around.

As all these efforts show, participation was the name of the game at Paris 2024, where everyone was invited.