News Excerpt:

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics (2024) took place with great fervor along the Seine in Paris.

 More about news:

• The magnificent City of Light, dotted with the spectacular Eiffel Tower and scores of majestic buildings featuring admirable architecture, welcomed the 33rd Olympic Games in a unique way, with the much-awaited Opening Ceremony on the Seine involving a stretch of Paris’ rich heritage.
• There has never been a celebration this grand during the 128-year history of the modern Olympiad as the Opening Ceremony, along the Seine, features iconic landmarks before culminating at Eiffel Tower; 78 athletes and officials from 12 disciplines take part from the Indian contingent.
• The novel parade, over six kilometers on Seine, took off from the Austerlitz bridge beside the Jardin des Plantes in the evening before passing under several bridges and gateways. It provided the athletes a nice view of some of the Games venues, such as Parc Urbain La Concorde, the Esplanade des Invalides, the Grand Palais and the Iena bridge, where the parade ended before the finale took place at the Trocadero.
• Greece, the first host of the Games, led the flotilla of 85 boats carrying 6800 athletes with water fountains adding to the beauty of the setting. A Refugee Olympic Team followed, underlining the times we live in as 205 delegates from different countries and hundreds of thousands of people, including several who watched it free, witnessed the amazing show.

Indian contingent:

• 78 athletes and officials from 12 disciplines take part from the Indian contingent.
• It was led by double Olympic medallist shuttler P.V. Sindhu and five-time Olympian Sharath Kamal.
• The Indian athletes who took part in the grand event included some prominent names such as four-time Olympian archers Deepika Kumari and Tarundeep Rai, Tokyo Games bronze medallist boxer Lovlina Borgohain, shooters Anjum Moudgil, Sift Kaur Samra, Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar and Anish Bhanwala, paddler Manika Batra and tennis player Rohan Bopanna.

About Paris Olympics 2024:

• The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be the biggest event ever organised in France. The Olympic Games will take place from 26 July to 11 August 2024, when Paris will become the centre of the world—the world of sport, and so much more. The Games are a popular, multicultural festival shared by so many people around the planet and represent a new adventure for France unlike anything it has experienced before.

• Paris 2024 Olympic Games key figures:

• • The XXXIII Olympiad
  • 26 July to 11 August 2024
  • 19 days of competition 
  • 29 events

• • 32 sports (including the 4 additional sports) 

• • 754 sessions (competitions and ceremonies)

• • 10,500 athletes

About Olympics:

• The modern Olympic Games are the world’s foremost multi-sports event.
• They are the largest sporting celebration in terms of the number of sports on the programme, the number of athletes present and the number of people from different nations gathered together at the same time, in the same place, in the spirit of friendly competition.
• Organized every four years, they include a summer and a winter edition. Athletes from all 206 National Olympic Committees and the IOC Olympic Refugee Team are eligible to compete in a wide range of sporting disciplines and events, watched by a worldwide audience.
• The first edition of the modern Olympic Games was staged in Athens, Greece, in 1896, while the first winter edition was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. Since 1994, the Olympic Games have alternated between a summer and winter edition every two years within the four-year period of each Olympiad.