It was 10:00 pm on Sunday 8 September when we had to admit that the moment of fervour that we had been experiencing for seven weeks was over. That the “enchanted parenthesis” of the Olympic and Paralympic Games was over. While the blind Malian singing couple Amadou and Mariam performed Gainsbourg’s song in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, at the foot of the now world-famous Olympic cauldron. I came to tell you that I’m leavingIn Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), at the Stade de France, five athletes who won medals during the Paralympic events accompanied the flag bearer of the French delegation and boccia champion Aurélie Aubert, who blew out the flame, symbolically marking the end of the Games.
Previously, at the Dionisio stadium, some 60,000 spectators greeted with warmth and emotion the athletes who, during the eleven days of the Paralympic Games, thrilled and kept the public in suspense. An audience that, for the most part, often did not know their names or their discipline: goalball, sitting volleyball, petanque, blind football… And who discovered, fascinated, the incredible physical abilities of men and women deprived of part of their senses and/or their limbs but equipped with “something extra” to use the title of the Artus film that was a huge hit in cinemas this summer.
As a sign of fate, it was in torrential rain, just like that which accompanied the parade on the Seine on the occasion of the opening of the Olympic Games on 26 July, that the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games was held at the Seine-Saint-Denis stadium.my Paralympic Games, the first to be held in France.
Covered in plastic ponchos but smiling radiantly, on foot or in wheelchairs, the 4,400 athletes from the 169 delegations marched under their respective flags to the rhythm of music played by the Republican Guard. The Champs Elysees by Joe Dassin, I will survive by Gloria Gaynor, or even that I love you by Johnny Hallyday – echoed by the spectators. Equipped with luminous bracelets that they waved rhythmically, they contributed throughout the evening to giving the Stade de France the appearance of a discotheque.
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And he is applauded like a rock star, his name “Toni” “Toni”, chanted from the stands (unlike Emmanuel Macron, who was loudly booed upon his arrival at the presidential tribune), while Tony Estanguet delivered his closing speech. With his indelible smile, the president of the Paris 2024 Games Organising Committee, who says he noticed “the challenge of [sa] life “, greeted the “Paralympic Revolutionaries”, believing that the moment of popular exaltation that we have experienced will contribute to “changing our view on difference.” He also wanted to thank the followers who “created an atmosphere of fire,” All volunteers have already joined in: 45,000 of them participated in the success of the Parisian event.
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