PARIS (AFP)The 17th Paralympic Games was launched on Wednesday night with a four-hour sight and sound spectacular in central Paris involving the 4,000 competitors who will take part in the 11-day festival of 22 para sports as well as hundreds of dancers and musicians with and without disabilities.
For the first Paralympic opening ceremony to be held outside the main stadium, around 20,000 people lined the Avenue des Champs Elysées for the parade of participants with physical, visual and intellectual impairments before they made their way into an arena constructed for 35,000 people around the Obelisk on the Place de La Concorde.
Accessibility for athletes in wheelchairs from the 168 delegations was facilitated with strips of asphalt laid along the avenue and placed over the square.
After the French team entered the stadium, Tony Estanguet, head of the organising committee for the Olympics and Paralympics, hailed the Paralympians as revolutionaries.
"Like our ancestors, you have panache," said Estanguet. "Like them you are fighting for a cause bigger than you. In your case your weapons are your records.
"Tonight you’re inviting us to join you in your Paralympic revolution, to give everybody their full place. When the sport starts we will no longer see disabilities but champions. You have no limits, so let us stop imposing limits on you."
Andrew Parsons, the boss of the International Paralympic Committeee, (IPC) which oversees the event, injected a geopolitical note into the proceedings.
"At a time of growing conflict and exclusion, let sport bring us together," he said.
"Let sport serve as a powerful force for good. We have 11 days of sensational sport to enjoy together."
Parsons, who took over at the IPC in September 2017 after heading the Brazilian Paralympic Committee, added: “The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will show what persons with disabilities can achieve at the highest level when the barriers to succeed are removed.
"The fact these opportunities largely exist only in sport in the year 2024 is shocking. It is proof we can and must do more to advance disability inclusion — whether on the field of play, in the classroom, concert hall or in the boardroom."
OPEN
After France's President Emmanuel Macron formally declared the Paralympic Games open, dancers dressed in white performed a piece to convey force, power and determination before the Paralympic flag was raised.
And to prepare the scene for the arrival of the flame, French musician Sébastien Tellier performed his hit song La Ritournelle.
Paralympians Charles-Antoine Kouakou, Fabien Lamirault, Elodie Lorandi, Alexis Hanquinquant and Nantenin Keita simultaneously lit the flame in the Olympic cauldron which is designed to look like a hot air balloon.
It eventually rose into the night sky as the Eiffel Tower glittered in the hinterland.
Ryadh Sallem, who will be competing in his sixth Paralympic Games, told France TV: "The ceremony was powerful and moving."
The 53-year-old added: "People were wondering what could be done better after the Olympics opening ceremony ... well here it was. There was spectacle and emotion."
Throughout the show, directed by Thomas Jolly who also led the Olympic opening ceremony, performers with and without disabilities seamlessly, projected a theme of inclusion and overcoming physical differences.
French singer Lucky Love, rechristened the song My Masculinity as My Ability. Starting in a white suit, the 30-year-old flamboyantly removed the jacket to reveal only one arm.
Musa Motha, whose left leg was removed due to cancer, used crutches to steer an array of dancers through a dynamic and captivating vignette.
Just hours before the opening ceremony, organisers said two million tickets had been sold for the 549 events that start on Thursday morning.
"We've taken a step forward since Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021," said the wheelchair tennis player Diede de Groot.
The 27-year-old Dutchwoman added: "We are much more visible and I think we have to see these Paralympic Games as a challenge to improve that visibility further and to make things more visible for others."
The Games will conclude on 8 September with a closing ceremony at the Stade de France in Saint Denis.