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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

26 Olympic fan zones planned for Paris during Games

The French capital is planning to host 26 free fanzones during this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, City Hall has announced.

Published: 24 April 2024 15:02 CEST
People walk down the stairs painted in the colours of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics in front of the Sacre Coeur Basilica on top of the Montmartre hill in Paris.
People walk down the stairs painted in the colours of the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics in front of the Sacre Coeur Basilica on top of the Montmartre hill in Paris. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)

Events at Stade de France and further afield will be broadcast on giant screens at the events, which will be open to the public until 11pm, when the day’s activities end, officials said.

A fanzone will be located in every arrondissement of Paris, apart from the seventh. 

READ ALSO Keep-fit in the Louvre: Museum offers Olympic sessions among masterpieces

The forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville, which will be renamed La Terrasse des Jeux after the elevated terrace that will be installed there, will be open from July 14th and the passage of the Olympic flame – when it will accommodate 6,000 people. 

The rest of the time, 2,500 people will be able to enter at the same time to, “follow the events, take part in sports, attend cultural events”, according to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

The three Paris Plages sites – the right bank quays of the Seine, the Bassin de La Villette and the Canal Saint-Martin – will also offer broadcasts, sports and cultural events. Rosa Bonheur’s barge Rosa sur Seine, moored at Les Invalides, will host the “Pride House” fanzone dedicated to LGBTQ+ people and their inclusion in sport.

Following the Opening Ceremony, The Jardins du Trocadéro will be transformed into a ‘Park of Champions’, at which the previous day’s medal winners will be able to meet and greet up to 13,500 fans, Martin Fourcade, president of the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Commission, told AFP.

On medal day itself, the athletes will go to the Parc de La Villette, transformed into a “Park of Nations” with the various national clubs.

In the run-up to the Olympics, an “olympiade des arrondissements” will give Parisians the chance to test themselves at various sports. The mayor also plans to take a dip in the Seine before the Olympics, with a “grand plongeon” to be organised sometime around June 23rd. 

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes’ beds are ‘anti-sex’

They may be made of cardboard, but the beds at the athletes' village for this year's Paris Olympics have been chosen for their environmental credentials, not to prevent competitors having sex, organisers said.

Published: 18 May 2024 13:19 CEST
Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes' beds are 'anti-sex'

The clarification came after fresh reports that the beds, manufactured by Japanese company Airweave and already used during the Tokyo 2020 Games, were to deter athletes from jumping under the covers together in the City of Love.

“We know the media has had a lot of fun with this story since Tokyo 2020, but for Paris 2024 the choice of these beds for the Olympic and Paralympic Village is primarily linked to a wider ambition to ensure minimal environmental impact and a second life for all equipment,” a spokesman for the Paris Games told AFP.

The bed bases are made from recycled cardboard, but during a demonstration in July last year Airweave founder Motokuni Takaoka jumped on one of them and stressed that they “can support several people on top”.

The Paris Games spokesman underlined that “the quality of the furniture has been rigorously tested to ensure it is robust, comfortable and appropriate for all the athletes who will use it, and who span a very broad range of body types – from gymnasts to judokas”.

The fully modular Airweave beds can be customised to accommodate long and large body sizes, with the mattresses — made out of resin fibre — available with different firmness levels.

After the Games, the bed frames will be recycled while the mattresses and pillows will be donated to schools or associations.

Athletes will sleep in single beds, two or three to a room, in the village, a newly built complex close to the main athletics stadium in a northern suburb of the capital.

A report this week in the New York Post tabloid entitled “‘Anti-sex’ beds have arrived at Paris Olympics” was reported by other media and widely circulated on social media.

Similar claims went viral before the Tokyo Olympics, sometimes fanned by athletes themselves.

To debunk them, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan filmed a video of himself jumping repeatedly on a bed to demonstrate their solidity.

At those Games, during the coronavirus pandemic, organisers, however, urged athletes to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact”.

In March, Laurent Dalard, in charge of first aid and health services at Paris 2024, said around 200,000 condoms for men and 20,000 for women will be made available at the athletes’ village during the Games.

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