The 2024 Summer Olympics is scheduled on July 26 to August 11. Let's take a quick look at the location, the mascot, venues, new events, schedule and how to watch the Games.
Host City
In September 2017, at the 131st IOC Session in Lima, Peru, Olympics officials have elected Paris as host city for the year 2024.
The 2024 Summer Olympics shall be the third Summer Olympics in Paris.
Having previously hosted in 1900 and 1924, Paris shall become the second city to host the Summer Olympics three times (after London which hosted the 1908, 1948 and 2012 Games).
Paris 2024 will feature the debut of breaking (breakdancing) as an Olympic event, and it will be the final Olympic Games held during the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach. The 2024 Games are expected to cost €8.3 billion (US$8.8 billion).
The Paris 2024 Olympics is the 33rd Summer Olympics. The first Summer Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924.
How to Watch the Games
Paris is 6 hours ahead of the United States' Eastern Time Zone, which means most major events will happen in the morning and afternoon for American viewers.
For USA viewers, NBC shall broadcast the games online and on TV. Olympic events will air on NBC, USA Network, CNBC and E!, and stream on Peacock and NBC Olympics platforms.
In the UK, fans can watch the Games on BBC TV, and the BBC Sport website and app, and there will also be extensive coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Venues
Most of the sporting events are set in and around Paris.
The Opening Ceremony is expected to be a spectacle, taking place along the Seine, the first time in Olympic history that the event will be held outside the main stadium.
The Parc des Princes, home to Paris St-Germain, will stage football matches, and Roland Garros will host tennis and boxing. Surfing will take place in Tahiti, an island in French Polynesia nearly 10,000 miles away from Paris.
The Stade de France will host the athletics and the Closing Ceremony.
About 95% of the venues already exist or are temporary, with the aquatics center being the only new venue specially built for the Games.
Schedule
Competition for the 2024 Olympic Summer Games begins with early rounds of football and rugby on July 24 Wednesday. The Opening Ceremony shall then be on July 26 Friday. The Closing Ceremony is scheduled on August 11 Sunday.
According to the Games' website, the women's Athletics, basketball, women and men's cycling track, handball, modern pentathlon, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling events are set on the last day of competition.
You can read more about the schedule here.
Sports - Are There New Events this Year?
There will be 329 events across 32 sports, including the 28 "core" Olympic sports contested in 2016 and 2020, and four optional sports that were proposed by the Paris Organizing Committee: breakdancing shall be making its Olympic debut as an optional sport, while skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing will return from 2020.
The Medals
Athletes participating in the games are vying to win and take home at least one of the 5,084 gold, silver and bronze medals up for grabs.
According to the official website, the Paris 2024 medals - to celebrate the return of the Games to France, each medal is embellished with an original piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower. Paris 2024 called on LVMH jeweler Chaumet to design its medals. Globally renowned for its craftsmanship, Chaumet has made the medal into a veritable jewel, with a construction conceived around three sources of inspiration: the hexagon, radiance, and gem-setting.
The Iron Lady also inspired the unique design of the ribbon that will allow athletes to wear their medals with pride. For the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, the medal ribbon features the Eiffel Tower's latticework. And the red of the ribbon for the Paralympic medals evokes the original colors of the Eiffel Tower: Venetian red and red-brown.
Around 10,500 athletes from over 200 nations will compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The Mascots
The official mascot of the 2024 Summer Olympics is the Olympic Phryge, based on the traditional small Phrygian hats that the mascots are shaped after. The name and design were chosen as symbols of freedom and to represent allegorical figures of the French republic.
The motto of the Olympic Phryge and Paralympic Phryge is: "Alone we go faster, but together we go further," representing the ways in which the mascots, and the people of the world, can make each other better by working side-by-side.
Olympics Hosts in the Future
- Winter Olympics 2026 - Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
- Summer Olympics 2028 - Los Angeles, USA
- Winter Olympics 2030 - TBD
- Summer Olympics 2032 - Brisbane, Australia
Source: https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024
