Paris is back to thrilling for its Games after having closed them less than 20 days ago. And it returns with all the pride of its ideals: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité but today also and above all "inclusion", the watchword of the 'other' Games, the Paralympics.
From the Champs-Elysées to the Concorde, Thomas Jolly's party is called "Paradoxe" this time and the enthusiasm that welcomes the Paralympic athletes is overwhelming. It was raining that evening of July 26, a lot of rain on the athletes parading in boats on the Seine, and even on the soaked hair of President Sergio Mattarella, which remained the symbol of a clumsy diplomatic blunder.
Today is a day of splendid sunshine and an evening of pure emotion with 5,100 athletes who began to parade on the Champs-Elysées to the Concorde. In the presidential gallery, which in the center sees the French president, Emmanuel Macron and the president of the International Paralympic Committee, Andrew Parsons, there is the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, with the Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi. In the same gallery, the Minister for Disabilities, Alessandra Locatelli.
The Italian delegation marched with its 141 male and female athletes, 26 more than in Tokyo, 51 debutants. They will try to beat the record of medals won, aware that "Tokyo was the greatest result of all time", as the president of the Cip, Luca Pancalli, underlined. They were led, up to the Concorde, by the two flag bearers, Ambra Sabatini and Luca Mazzone.
At the Concorde, it begins with "Discorde", the first painting created with many discordant pianos led by Chilly Gonzales, around the obelisk: 140 dancers and 16 artists with disabilities, in wheelchairs, or on crutches, parade. The sky over the Concorde fills with white-red-blue smoke bombs of France. Then a taxi covered with Olympic mascots Phryge speeds by, with the French swimmer with a disability, Théo Curin, at the wheel. Then Edith Piaf returns to the stage, as in the other opening of the Games, this time with "Je ne regrette rien", in a version that is difficult to recognize, by Christine and the Queens. The "Patrouille de France" speeds through the sky and the parade of athletes begins.
Flags with the colors of the Olympic medals, gold, silver and bronze, dominate, and these three colors replace those of the French flag. Afghanistan opens the parade of 168 delegations towards a Concorde that has been transformed from a 'parc urbain', where competitions for new "urban" sports, skateboarding, BMX, breakdancing, were held, into the largest stadium in the world. Behind, a few meters away, the Olympic brazier burns, which at the end of the ceremony will fly again into the sky of Paris in a hot air balloon.
(Online Union)
