Bach hails Paris Olympics 2024 as “Games of new era”

Hangzou, China | Xinhua | International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach hailed next year’s Olympic Games in Paris as “the Games of a new era” on Friday.

Bach made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua, a day before he is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the Hangzhou Asian Games.

Paris 2024 will be “the first Olympic Games which has been planned from the very beginning and will be delivered to the very end according to the Olympic Agenda 2020 of the IOC,” Bach noted.

“So they will be Games which will be more sustainable by making use of 95 percent of existing temporary facilities.”

According to the IOC chief, Paris 2024’s goal is to cut in half the Games’ carbon emissions compared to the average of London 2012 and Rio 2016.

Bach added that the 2024 Olympics has also generated a boom in sporting participation.

“We see already now much higher engagement of the French population and French society has become more active, and in particular also in schools,” he said.

For the first time in history, the general public will be invited to run the Olympic Marathon in Paris 2024 on the same route as the elite athletes.

“This is why these Games will not only sustainable, they will be inclusive,” Bach said.

The IOC president stressed that the sport of the future has to go where the people are, whether in the real world or in the virtual world.

“The people are more and more in the urban centers, so to have these sports in landmarks of Paris will add a new dimension to these Games,” he said.

Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics in history to achieve numerical gender parity on the field of play, with the same number of female and male athletes participating in the largest sporting event in the world.

“These are just some of the new factors why we say this will be the Games of the Olympic Agenda. This will be Games of a new era,” said Bach.