And the enchanted parenthesis was over. The paramarathon events began on Sunday morning, September 8, from the Georges-Valbon departmental park in Seine-Saint-Denis, a few hours before the Paralympic closing ceremony marking the end of the Paris Games (JOP 2024). As a pleasant farewell to this 410-hectare green corner, classified as Natura 2000, set in the middle of a department more often synonymous with macadam, which was from July 26 to September 8 a magnificent party place.
From this sequence, the park, which spans five municipalities (Dugny, Garges-les-Gonesses, La Courneuve, Saint-Denis and Stains), emerges larger, better known and more beautiful. To the point of casting a small shadow on the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, the emblematic home of the JOP during the “9-3” and beyond? “The park embodied something else. A place with no entrance fee, designed primarily for us, the locals, and which everyone could make their own.”observes Mariame Bathily, a resident of the town of 4,000 whose towers line the south of the public garden. ” Us “ It has also expanded considerably over the course of one summer. Mariame met English and Canadian tourists there, “complaining, without prejudice, about a strange mixture that is necessarily good”relates.
The department saw the bigger picture by installing an eight-hectare Olympic and Paralympic Games venue with a capacity of 10,000 people inside this park, created in 1970. All for 4 million euros. Giant screens placed over the lake to follow the events, a concert stage, food trucks, fireworks, an 80-metre panoramic tower that allows for height gains… This surprising mix took on the air of a Paralympic Games Festival. Humanity – especially when Algerian singer Soolking came to unleash the crowd –, a cotton candy-flavoured fair, an MJC that celebrates both sport and art.
A “leu leu queue” of optimists
We also come across a double Dutch workshop (the street art of jumping rope), Olympic silver medallist boxer Sofiane Oumiha, a storyteller who captivates children in the shade of tall trees, a swimming simulator that attracts pre-teens, a “leu leu line” of optimists on the lake, tabla drummers, beach volleyball courts that are all the rage even among the police…
“They even took photos with the sheep”laughs Julie Lou Dubreuilh, a shepherd from the Clinamen association who looks after a flock of thirty sheep and lives in the apartment house located west of the park. “union of sheep”as she calls him, whose unexpected presence first surprised the numerous agents stationed in Valbon, from the mounted police to the anti-crime squad. “The climate was peaceful, the people happy”the breeder summarizes.
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