The curtain came down on Paris’ feel-good summer with a grand parade of French athletes on the Champs Elysees on Saturday after the country threw one last party to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The Parade of Champions included 460 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including 120 Paris medalists. About 70,000 spectators lined up on the parade’s route on the French capital’s famed avenue that ended on a ring-shaped stage around the Arc de Triomphe monument. Hundreds of the Games’ volunteers, Olympic and Paralympic representatives and city officials also attended.
Organizers delivered a celebration of French sport on par with the spectacular and audacious opening and closing of the July 26-August 11 Olympics and the August 28-Sepember 8 Paralympic ceremonies.
“Among us, we call it the 5th ceremony,” Thierry Reboul, the director of ceremonies, told French media. “We tried to include the same elements to this show as we did to the four ceremonies this summer: surprise, emotion and sharing.”
President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister, Michel Barnier, also attended. During the ceremony, Macron decorated with state honors 120 French Olympians, who had medaled in Paris, including the star swimmer and judoka, Leon Marchand and Teddy Riner. In all, 187 French athletes were bestowed with the Legion of Honor or the National Order of Merit on Saturday, but not all participated in the parade.
Macron’s celebration of the Olympic spirit that he said has produced “national harmony” came against the backdrop of a harsh political reality and a deeply divided society following an inconclusive legislative elections in July, just before the start of the Paris Games.
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