About 17,000 tickets for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be offered by the State to people with disabilities and their caregivers, learned The cross with the Ministry of Solidarity. An announcement made on the occasion of Olympic and Paralympic Week organized in many schools in France, which begins this Monday. These 17,000 places are part of the 400,000 tickets purchased by the State and whose general distribution remains the responsibility of the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
At a time when the organizing committee wants to make the Paris Games a world celebration of parasport, does this figure live up to expectations? “It is not because we have identified a number of places for people with disabilities that it is a ceiling”assures Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister Delegate for People with Disabilities to the Minister of Solidarity. “Among the tickets reserved for young people, around 200,000, some will also go to young people with disabilities. But it is important to identify a quota dedicated to associations, medico-social establishments and caregivers. »
According to our information, the disability associations will be in charge of distributing these 17,000 places.
Promote parasport
Three ministers travel Monday to a college in Île-de-France then to the Zénith de la Villette in Paris, to inaugurate Olympic and Paralympic Week. Pap Ndiaye, Minister of Education, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, Minister of Sports, and Geneviève Darrieussecq thus intend to promote parasport and place it at the heart of the Olympic project.
Geneviève Darrieussecq recalls on this occasion that people with disabilities “must be able to access sport like the others”. “At the territorial level, especially rural ones, we can clearly see the difficulties of access. We are going to take advantage of the Paris 2024 Games to allow clubs to welcome more people with disabilities. »
Today, approximately 1,000 French sports clubs welcome people with disabilities. The idea for the Minister is “to reach 4,000 after the Games”. It also hopes to set up the thirty minutes of daily sport, practiced in schools since the start of the 2022 school year, within medico-social establishments. « We have asked the inspection services to identify the obstacles to this practice”she explains.
As for the concerns of associations about accessibility and inclusion in view of the 2024 Olympics, Geneviève Darrieussecq acknowledges that “everything will not be perfect”. “We know that certain things will not be accessible, such as the historic metro, because it is not possible in the time allowed. But everyone is working with a lot of commitment”she says, indicating that the Olympic village will be 100% accessible to people with disabilities.