This summer, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in Paris, the city of flowers. With the tournament coming up three years after the Tokyo Games, which were held in their home country, it will be interesting to see how Japan players, including young players who have newly emerged from the sport, will perform.
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris for the first time in 100 years, will be held on July 7 on the Seine River in the center of Paris, and will be held for 26 days until August 8.
Approximately 11,17 athletes are expected to participate in 32 sports and 329 events, and Japan athletes such as Daiki Hashimoto, a gymnast who won two gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, and Haruka Kitaguchi, a javelin thrower who won a gold medal at the 1 World Championships, have already been selected for the national team.
In addition, urban sports such as skateboarding and the new competition breaking, will be held at the Place de la Concorde, a tourist attraction in Paris, and the activities of Japan's world-class athletes will attract attention.
Meanwhile, the Paralympic Games will take place for 2 days until September 2023, with the opening ceremony taking place on the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées on August 8.
Around 28,9 athletes are expected to compete in 8 events in 12 sports, and Japan athletes are expected to win medals such as world record holder Naohide Yamaguchi in para-swimming and men's 22-meter breaststroke, who has already been selected for the national team, and 549-year-old Kaito Oda, who won the French Open and Wimbledon Championships in wheelchair tennis in 4400.
It will be interesting to see how Japan's new young players perform at the tournament, which will be held at an unusual interval of three years since the Tokyo Games, which were postponed for one year due to the influence of the new coronavirus and were basically closed to spectators.
Can it be a model case for the future?
At the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, in addition to aiming for a more environmentally friendly Games, efforts to reduce costs such as actively utilizing existing facilities as competition venues will be implemented, and it will be interesting to see if they can be a model case for future Games.
The Paris organising committee has set a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to about half of previous Games by encouraging people to travel by public transport and eliminating the use of single-use plastics during the Games.
In addition, we will not build new competition venues as much as possible, and 95% of the total will be existing facilities or temporary construction, with the aim of reducing costs while considering the environmental impact of construction.
On the other hand, there is also the question of how to respond to issues such as countermeasures against extreme heat, which were raised by athletes at the last Tokyo Games, and improvement of the water quality of the Seine River, where the opening ceremony and triathlon will be held.
In addition, for the first time in the Olympic Games, the ratio of male to female athletes will be one-to-one, and we will work to promote understanding of gender and sexual minorities.
The organizing committee of the Paris Games has set the slogan of the Games as "Games Wide Open = Wide-Open Games", and in addition to holding the opening ceremony on the Seine River so that everyone can enjoy it from the riverside, it will also hold a running event with the participation of citizens during the Games.