The president of the Organizing Committee of Paris 2024, Tony Estanguet, said Tuesday that one day before the start of the Paralympic Games the event sold two million tickets while tickets for seven sports -fencing, track cycling, taekwondo, equestrian, triathlon, shooting, and blind soccer- where sold out.
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00:00Out of the 2.5 million tickets available, we already sold around 2 million tickets.
00:06So that's good.
00:08We know that we will continue to sell tickets over the next days and probably till the end
00:14of the Games.
00:15It's been the case for the Olympics.
00:16We sold tickets till the last day, even the last hour, and that's been quite exciting
00:24for us to see that fans, till the end, were excited and really wanted to take the last
00:31opportunities.
00:32So we can expect it will be also the case with the launch of the Opening Ceremony, with
00:36the launch of the first competitions.
00:39We can expect that there will be also new fans interested in being part of the Paralympics
00:46at the end.
00:47So there are still around 500,000 tickets available in many sports.
00:54So don't hesitate to seize those opportunities.
00:58These athletes are here to compete.
00:59They are rivals.
01:01They want the tenth of the second, the one centimetre.
01:03They want the small difference.
01:06And still, they live together in the Paralympic Village, a place that is absolutely accessible,
01:12under the same roof, in peace.
01:15And why the world cannot be like that, outside of the Paralympic Village, outside of the
01:19Paralympic Games, outside of the Paris 2024 umbrella?
01:23So in that sense, yes, it's disappointing that if we give persons with disability an
01:27opportunity, they can excel.
01:28But we don't want that only in sport.
01:31That's why we say change starts with sport, but we want this in the boardroom, in the
01:35classroom.
01:36We want this in the communities.
01:37We want this in every different society.
01:40So we want change to start with sport, but goes beyond that.
01:46That being said, we want them to focus on that, focus on their performances, focus in
01:51their responsibility as persons with disability, who are in the most important platform on
01:56the planet for persons with disability to advance the agenda, the human rights agenda
02:01of persons with disability, and despite what is going on in different parts of the world,
02:06to focus on that.
02:07It's just disgraceful that in 2024, we are seeing what we're seeing in the news, in terms
02:14of conflicts around the world, in terms of polarisation, in terms of hostility, in terms
02:19of basically people just not being able to live together.