Paris Olympics: host of innovations include gender parity and surfing in paradise

Exactly 100 years since the Olympics were last staged in Paris, and 128 years since its modern revival in Athens, the Summer Games can still deliver fresh looks for its 33rd edition. From an opening ceremony on water, to new sports, and prize money for athletes, there will be plenty of firsts over the next several weeks. Here, we take a look at some of the innovations that will see this year’s Games go down in history for something other than gold medals and records. Floating opening ceremony This historic first for any Summer Games will launch the Paris Olympics and could be its defining image: thousands of athletes in a flotilla sailing westward along the River Seine at sunset toward the Eiffel Tower on Friday. The ambitious idea was to bring the tone-setting spectacle out of an expensively ticketed stadium and into the city where more people could see it. A crowd of 320,000 people is expected on the riverbanks along the six-kilometre (3.7-mile) route from Pont d’Austerlitz to Pont d’Iena. Tickets will be free for about 220,000 invited and security-screened spectators watching from the upper river bank. About 100,000 paying spectators, including those splashing out on lavish hospitality packages, will watch from the lower riverside and around the Trocadero plaza – where the parade will end looking across to the Eiffel Tower. It is the most audacious plan for a main Olympics ceremony, and its most fraught security risk. French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged the river-borne parade could be moved if the city was struck again by terrorists as it was in 2015. The closing ceremony on August 11 is scheduled in the Stade de France National Stadium after it hosts track and field in the final week. “Since we are professional, there are obviously plan Bs, plan Cs, etc,” Macron said in December. Gender parity Paris was where women first competed at the Olympics in 1900, with 22 of the 997 athletes in competition. This time, for the first time, women have an equal share with men of an entry quota that is now 10,500 athletes across 329 events. “This is our contribution to a more gender-equal world,” Thomas Bach, the IOC president, has said. That 2.2 per cent proportion of female athletes in 1900 had risen to 23 per cent at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, where American Joan Benoit won the first women’s Olympic marathon. There were debuts in LA for rhythmic gymnastics and what was then called synchronised swimming. It is now artistic swimming and men will make their Olympic debut in the event in Paris. As the total of female athletes approached 50 per cent, the IOC put pressure on Olympic teams that traditionally sent only men to compete and so Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei included female athletes for the first time at London in 2012. The percentage reached 48 per cent at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, when teams were encouraged to select a man and a woman each to be flag bearers at the opening ceremony. With gender parity on the field of play, a challenge for the IOC is to one day have a female president. Nine men have led the IOC since 1894. Prize money World Athletics has said it will reward gold medallists from Olympic revenues in a controversial break with tradition, in a move that angered the IOC. Each of the 48 gold medals in track and field in Paris carries a US$50,000 (HK$390,000) prize. For LA in 2028, World Athletics also wants to pay prize money for silver and bronze. Prize money has become routine for Olympic athletes when paid by state governments and national Olympic bodies. France will pay its gold medallists around US$85,000 each, while Hong Kong athletes can earn HK$6 million for an individual gold medal. However, the US$2.4m pledge announced by World Athletics president Sebastian Coe will come directly from the sport’s share of the IOC’s multibillion-dollar income from broadcasting and sponsor deals. In Tokyo, the IOC set aside about US$540m for the collective group of Summer Games sports bodies, known as ASOIF, to share among its members. Track is a top-tier Olympic sport and so got the highest payment, almost US$39.5m. The IOC does not want a trend to develop, preferring governing bodies spend their Olympic revenues on development projects. World Athletics was among the few with money to spare to reward elite athletes. Breaking through Breaking, or breakdancing, makes its Olympic debut in Paris, ending a 50-year journey from the Bronx when it arrives at the Place de la Concorde, where 16 B-Boys and 16 B-Girls will compete on August 9 and 10. The sport’s Olympic path overseen by the World DanceSport Federation follows the downtown opening ceremony concept. Breaking might yet be one and done, however. It has been dropped for 2028 in LA before getting a chance to prove itself. LA organisers have opted instead to give cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash their modern Olympic debuts. It is unclear yet if Brisbane will push to give breaking a second chance in 2032. Surf’s up Add surfing by a beach in Tahiti to the picture postcard images in store from the Paris Olympics. Staging an event half a world away from the Olympic host city is not unique, though this time it is by design, and concurrently. In 1956, horse quarantine rules in Australia meant equestrian events were held in Stockholm, Sweden, five months before the opening ceremony in Melbourne. Paris organisers stuck to their wish by taking surfing to French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean even when the IOC preferred to use an option on the mainland, such as the Atlantic Ocean resort of Biarritz. Teahupo’o was approved and the controversy that has followed was not about excessive long-haul flights, but instead building a tower for the judges in the sea that could damage the coral reef.

Paris Olympics: host of innovations include gender parity and surfing in paradise

Exactly 100 years since the Olympics were last staged in the French capital, the Summer Games can still deliver fresh looks for its 33rd edition

Floating opening ceremony