Parade and show on Saturday around the Arc de Triomphe, 70,000 spectators… Everything you need to know about the parade of JOP athletes – Libération

2024-09-11 14:52:02

The final tribute will be paid in Paris on Saturday September 14 to those who made these Games a success. 70,000 people will be able to go for free if they have reserved their place.

We last with fanfare, on one of the most famous avenues in the world. Then the party will be over, for good this time. Saturday September 14, on the Champs-Elysées, a final tribute will be paid to those who made the Olympic and Paralympic Games a success: to the volunteers, organizations and athletes, of course. Want about Emmanuel Macron for “Extend this time”, this celebration “open to all”, dixit the Elysée, will end with an exhibition at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe. Libe Take stock of what we know about this “Trail of Champions”.

Parade, podium and XXL stage

Each event of the Olympic and Paralympic Games has an abbreviation: CR1 for the opening of the Olympics, CR2 for the finals, CR3 for the opening of the Paralympics, etc. Saturday, again and again organized by Thierry Reboul, director of the festival, is no exception: “Among us, we call it CR5, to say that we will try to use the same elements until today as for the other four parties,” he said once press conference Wednesday, September 11 at the beginning of Friday.

For this “CR5” therefore, Reboul and his teams saw the big picture, at the request of the Elysée. Along the Champs-Elysées, a “another podium which will be about 300 meters long will be installed”, from Georges V to “Indeed, Place de l’Etoile”. From 4 pm Saturday, and until 6 pm, between 8,000 and 10,000 people are expected to walk. We will see it through “Gamers”, Namely: help, members of the organization, community, state work and show French athletes and their staff.

For this time, we talk about a little more than 180 Olympians who responded to the invitation (with 78 medalists), including Teddy Riner and the French judo team, the Lebrun brothers in table tennis, the fencer Manon Apithy-Brunet, Antoine Dupont and the rugby player or even Léon Marchand and the youth. The players that most of the team sports footballers deserve, however, are missing because all or almost all of them have restarted their club season. At least 130 Paralympic athletes will also parade, including around fifty medalists.

So everyone will gather to the Arc de Triomphe around which a huge stage (400 meters in area) and 360 degrees will be installed. The medalists will be decorated by Emmanuel Macron and will receive the Band of Honor. Some athletes who are members of the “Army of Champions” will also participate in the daily lighting ceremony of the Flame of the Unknown Soldier.

A “best-of” of the ceremony

Honorable athletes, “A great show” must be held, always around the Arc de Triomphe. “The time was very easy,” Thierry Reboul says: “We released four albums [les quatre cérémonies, ndlr], and when we release four albums in the music world, we do our best. So we will offer a selection of parties, mainly singing. “ We promise “original forms”, we had “Live Show” and a “A great game, both visual and auditory”.

We still don’t know who Céline Dion, Martin Solveig, Lady Gaga or Christine and the Queens will be. “We have to finish the line in the next hours, we will decide to communicate about it then, but we still need some time to finish,” said the director of the ceremony. The show is expected from 9 pm to 11 pm, before a DJ set “From the Arc de Triomphe” not agreed upon.

70,000 ticket reservation for free

This Wednesday at 4 pm ticket office of the “Trail of Champions” on the site parade.paris2024.org. Tickets are free and have been installed only for security reasons, in order to control the flow (a free ticket office has also been opened to enter the Olympic cauldron in the Tuileries garden). In total, there are 30,000 places along the Champs-Elysées and 40,000 around the Arc de Triomphe, the equivalent of a full French stadium in the Olympic version. The process is simple: first come, first served (limited to four places per person).

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