P lastered on the walls of every Métro station in Paris this week are adverts boasting some boundary-pushing Franglais. Alongside images of Paralympic athletes running, leaping and wheeling is a slogan directed at residents of the French capital. It reads: “Game [is not] over”.
For those unfamiliar with 1980s video arcade jargon, “game over” was the message that heralded the moment a machine ate your money. The grammatically tortuous “is not” has been overlaid by organisers of Paris 2024 to remind locals that the summer of sporting excellence will continue. The Paralympic Games begin on Wednesday night, and every Parisian is welcome.
After months of anxiety over low ticket sales and concerns over whether a French audience would embrace disability sport, the news in recent days has been good. More than 2m tickets have now been sold, out of 2.5m, with a number of events sold out.
The Île de France regional government has announced an ambition to make the Paris Métro accessible to wheelchair users at last, one of the abiding concerns around the Games. And on Wednesday night comes an opening ceremony that will once again take place in the heart of the city and organisers say it will act as a “gigantic hug” to the 44,000 athletes competing over the following 11 days. Starting on the Champs Élysées, the opening parade will move along “the world’s most beautiful avenue” before a more traditional ceremony takes place in the open air at the Place de la .