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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.

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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STRIKES

Olympic pay strike to ‘severely disrupt’ Paris public transport on Tuesday

A Tuesday rail strike over bonuses for Paris' July-August Olympic Games period will leave just one in five suburban commuter trains running on some lines in the French capital, operator SNCF have warned.

Olympic pay strike to 'severely disrupt' Paris public transport on Tuesday

Traffic will be “very severely disrupted”, SNCF said, with certain lines suspended outside peak hours.

The operator’s Transilien Paris regional network has urged people to work from home or find alternate transport on Tuesday, which follows a Monday public holiday.

Rail workers’ unions are pressuring SNCF in negotiations over bonuses for working through the Olympic period.

Their counterparts at transport operator RATP, which runs metro and bus services in Paris, have already secured an average 1,000-euro ($1,086) bonus, reaching up to 2,500 euros for the most in-demand train and bus drivers.

“We thought the talks were dragging on a bit and wanted to provoke something,” Fabien Villedieu of the SUD-Rail union told AFP on Friday.

“We have a heavy workload with 4,500 additional trains in August, so a whole range of our colleagues won’t be able to go on holiday,” he added.

Strikes and threats of industrial action during the Games have marked the months leading up to the event, including from rubbish collectors and government and medical workers.

Rubbish collectors this month won a pay rise on top of an Olympic bonus, heading off multiple days of walkouts flagged for later in May and over the period of the Games.

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