2023-06-24 07:56:18
Practicing a sporting activity under the loving gaze of the Good Mother, the boats moored in the Old Port below, the Provençal sun and the Mistral as a bonus: it is in this postcard setting that the youngest as well as the oldest will be able to enjoy the Olympic Day celebrations. For the first weekend of summer, Place Villeneuve-Bargemon will host a whole range of sporting and recreational activities over 5,600 square meters. Installed by the Decathlon brand, the infrastructure will make practice accessible to everyone with initiation to traditional and new sports, demonstrations and relaxation areas.
Head of the Decathlon Paris 2024 partnership, Virginie Sainte-Rose reveals the genesis of the event: “We received a very favorable response in these three cities (Lille, Reims and Marseille) and we are also present in 80 stores, which provides fairly significant territorial coverage on this Olympic day. We had the ambition to mobilize our stores and go to the heart of cities to seek out people who do not have the reflex to practice sports activities. In the city center, they will be able to have fun, test and practice with us for free. »
City of sport par excellence, Marseille will live a weekend in the time of the Olympics, a kind of general rehearsal for the sailing and football events scheduled for the summer of 2024. The Orange Vélodrome will thus host ten football matches (five men’s and five women’s) and the Marina – currently under construction – will be the venue for the ten sailing events (July 28-August 8).
Fans will be able to enjoy and indulge in multiple sports, from the most traditional (table tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, fencing, etc.) to the most contemporary (climbing, breakdancing), also including the Paralympic disciplines (blind football, basketball and volleyball armchair).
A dozen disciplines represented
Some have also been revised for fun purposes. Eléa Breuilles, project manager, details this point: “Initially, we were offered the Prado beaches but we finally settled on the Old Port with a very strong symbolism. This weekend, we will be able to accommodate around 1,500 people at the same time. We developed the concept by adapting to the territory, with for example breakdance which is very present in Marseille. We will have classic sports that we wanted to divert and make fun with a power 4 basketball or a cylindrical tennis table. We do not want to distort the practice but simply bring a playful touch. Each discipline will have its zone.
The ensemble will be supervised by around a hundred volunteers from clubs, associations and employees of Decathlon, supplier and official dresser of some 50,000 volunteers at the sporting event next summer (40,000 in Paris and 5,000 in host cities). “The partnership with Paris 2024 came from this mission of clothing the volunteers. This goes from the drawing, from the design to the distribution of the clothes through the manufacturing: everything is made in France. This will be the first time that an equipment supplier has distributed the outfits, namely a million pieces for tens of thousands of volunteers, ”underlines Virginie Sainte-Rose.
Invited as a guest, the goalkeeper of the French handball team Vincent Gérard will also be present and will lead initiations (2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. this Saturday). And since sport and culture go hand in hand, a giant game of laws will make all generations aware of the history of Olympism. This weekend, the legendary “Droit au But” dear to the people of Marseille will therefore give way to the iconic “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“faster, higher, stronger”).
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