Paralympic Games opening ceremony starts the final chapter on a long summer of sport in Paris

PARIS (AP) — Just weeks after hosting the Olympics, Paris inaugurated the 2024 Paralympics on Wednesday with a nearly four-hour-long opening ceremony in the heart of the city.

Against the backdrop of a setting sun, thousands of athletes paraded down the famed Champs-Elysées avenue to Place de la Concorde in central Paris where French President Emmanuel Macron officially declared the Paralympic Games open.

About 50,000 people watched the ceremony in stands built around the iconic square, which is the biggest in Paris and is visible from afar because of its ancient Egyptian Obelisk. Accessibility for athletes in wheelchairs was facilitated with strips of asphalt laid along the avenue and placed over the square.

More than 4,000 athletes with physical, visual and intellectual impairments will compete in 22 sports from Thursday until Sept. 8. Organizers say more than 2 million of the 2.8 million tickets have been sold for the various Paralympic events.

The opening ceremony was held outside the confines of a stadium, just like when the Olympics opened in the city on July 26. Fighter planes flew overhead, leaving red-white-and blue vapors in the colors of the French national flag, before the delegations entered the square in alphabetical order.

Some delegations were huge — more than 250 athletes from Brazil — and some were tiny — less than a handful from Barbados and just three from Myanmar.

Ukraine’s delegation got a loud cheer and some of the crowd stood to applaud them.

Flag bearers Steve Serio and Nicky Nieves led the U.S. team’s delegation. The French arrived last and to roars from the crowd, which then sang along to popular French songs, including “Que Je T’aime” by late rocker Johnny Hallyday.

Throughout the show, directed by Thomas Jolly who also led the Olympic opening ceremony, singers, dancers and musicians with and without disabilities performed on stage together seamlessly, projecting a theme of inclusion and overcoming physical differences. Lucky Love, a French singer who lost his left arm at birth, was joined by performers in wheelchairs. Other acts featured dancers with crutches.

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons said he hoped the Paris Paralympics would start an “inclusion revolution” beyond the field of sport.

“The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will show what persons with disabilities can achieve at the highest level when the barriers to succeed are removed,” he said in a speech. “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.”

As the ceremony concluded, the Paralympic torch was carried into the area by former Olympic wheelchair tennis gold medalist Michaël Jérémiasz, who was surrounded on stage by dozens of torchbearers. Five French Paralympians lit the Olympic cauldron, which is designed to look like a hot air balloon and glowed gold-like in the night.

The Paralympic flag was raised high into the night sky and its emblem adorned the top of the Arc de Triomphe about 3 kilometers (2 miles) away.

Although Wednesday night’s show started at 8 p.m. local time, fans had gathered hours earlier under a scorching sun to get top spots along the way. As performers entertained the crowd on stage, volunteers danced alongside Paralympians as they waved their national flags and the sky gave off a postcard-perfect orange glow.

Tony Estanguet, the president of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, called Paralympians “immense champions who we have the honor of being with tonight.”

The first medals handed out on Thursday will be in taekwondo, table tennis, swimming and track cycling. Athletes are grouped by impairment levels to ensure as level a playing field as possible.

The closing ceremony will be held at Stade de France, the national stadium.

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Associated Press Writer Tom Nouvian in Paris contributed to this report.

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AP Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games

Jerome Pugmire, The Associated Press