Paris 2024: More innovative Games
Paris 2024 was the very first Olympic Games to be fully planned and delivered in line with the reforms mapped out in Olympic Agenda 2020 and Olympic Agenda 2020+5.
Adopted in December 2014, Olympic Agenda 2020 was a set of 40 detailed recommendations made with the intention of responding to global, social, economic, and environmental challenges and strengthening the relevance of the Olympic Games.
Olympic Agenda 2020+5 emerged exactly six years later and built on its predecessor's results. Developed in collaboration with the Olympic Movement’s stakeholders, it comprised 15 recommendations and served as the roadmap for the IOC and Olympic Movement through to 2025.
Words were all very well, but what about actions?
What did Olympic Agenda mean in practical terms for Paris 2024?
Maximum use of existing facilities
The pledge the IOC made in Recommendation 1 of Agenda 2020 was “to actively promote the maximum use of existing facilities and the use of temporary and demountable venues.”
The organisers of Paris 2024 delivered on that by staging the Games’ 329 events at venues that were for the most part existing or temporary, 95% of them in fact. Only two of Paris 2024’s 35 competition venues were built after the city’s election as host: Porte de La Chapelle Arena and the Aquatics Centre, the former already planned before, irrespective of the Games.
Foster sustainable Games
In the process, Paris 2024 also put Recommendation 2 of Agenda 2020+5 into practice, fostering sustainable Games by minimising construction, reducing costs and the carbon footprint, and making the most of the French capital’s iconic venues and locations.
That sustainability ethic applied not just to venues but to every aspect of Paris 2024, from energy and food to transport and digital services. The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad aimed to reduce emissions by half compared to London 2012 and Rio 2016, in line with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
In embracing innovative solutions, Paris 2024 set new standards for more sustainable events, by doing more with less, all while creating a lasting legacy. These were Games that adapted to the host city – not vice versa – and helped bring more sport to more people – at schools, at work, and in cities.
Foster gender equality
Olympic Agenda also set out to “foster gender equality,” the aim of Recommendation 11. Ten years on from its publication, that goal became a reality at Paris 2024, where half of the 10,500 athletes were women. This was the first time in the history of the Games that gender parity was achieved.
The concept of equality also extended to the number of mixed events. There were 22 of them at Paris 2024, up from 8 at London 2012 and 18 at Tokyo 2020.
Strengthen support to athletes
Talking of people, what of the human-centred aims of Olympic Agenda, enshrined in Recommendation 18: “Strengthen support to athletes”?
Fulfilling the IOC pledge to “further invest in supporting athletes on and off the field of play,” Paris 2024 teamed up with the French Development Agency (AFD) to launch a business incubator programme for elite athletes.
Every year, upwards of 20 athlete entrepreneurs from France and Africa, including former and current Olympians and Paralympians, received training on how to develop business projects in areas such as social integration, the environment, gender equality, health, and education.
As well as helping to bring about genuine change in society, these athletes were given the means to make a seamless transition into their post-competitive careers.
These are just some of the ways in which Paris 2024 took the aims of Olympic Agenda 2020 and 2020+5 and made them a reality, many other examples of which can be found in the Olympic Agenda 2020 Closing Report and the Olympic Agenda 2020+5 Midway Report.
In areas such as sustainability, athlete responsibility, social change, and climate change, Olympic Agenda shaped this edition of the Olympic Games, allowing it to be spectacular yet responsible, addressing the challenges of the day.