By Wang Yanfang
Intro: The 2024 Paris Paralympic Games began on Aug. 28 with an opening ceremony that saw 22 million viewers in France, showing an increase in public interest toward para-athletics. This year’s event also witnesses a rise in the number of participating Paralympians.
The 2024 Paris Paralympic Games officially opened on the evening of Aug. 28 at Place de la Concorde, a public square and historical landmark in the French capital. Marking the first time an opening ceremony has been held outside of a Paralympic Games’ stadium, the inaugural ceremony saw a peak TV audience of 22 million viewers in France.
Since the first Paralympics in Rome in 1960, interest for the sporting event has grown. According to an organizers’ statement, over two million tickets for this year’s Paralympic Games were purchased before the opening ceremony even began.
The first Paralympic Games saw 400 athletes from 23 countries compete in 57 events across eight sports, and its opening ceremony attracted a crowd of 5,000 spectators.
This year in Paris, around 4,400 athletes from a record 168 delegations have been named to participate in the 11-day event, competing across 22 different sports.
According to International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons, the number of delegations this year is the largest number ever, with delegations from Eritrea, Kiribati and Kosovo making their Paralympic debuts.
Among the 168 delegations, 167 delegates are from National Paralympic Committees with the final delegation being a team of eight refugee Paralympians and one guide runner, making this year’s Refugee Paralympic Team the largest in the competition’s history, according to the Paralympic Games’ official website.
During his welcome speech, Tony Estanguet, president of the 2024 Paris organizing committee, praised the participating athletes for their hard work and perseverance to overcome social biases and become “great champions.”
“Even if all your life stories are unique, you have often lived with people listing all the things you are unable to do until the day you first entered a sports club. On that day, you understood that sport would not impose any limits. On that day, you understood that sport would never put you in a box. Like all athletes, you trained, you sweated, you failed and you got back up again,” Estanguet stated.
Among the ranks of Paralympians that have beaten the odds is John McFall. Bronze medalist in the T42 100 meters race at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics and a surgeon, McFall could soon add astronaut to his list of titles. In November 2022, he was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to attend an astronaut training program as well as play a major role in a study conducted by the agency to discover and remedy potential obstacles for people with disabilities going to outer space.
When it comes to his work with the ESA, McFall has said that a person with a disability to be a professional astronaut presents a powerful message of willpower, crediting his efforts to the success and legacy of the Paralympic movement.
McFall returned to this year’s Paralympic Games in Paris as one of two flagbearers during the opening ceremony to help ring in the competition.
