Paris bids farewell to the Paralympic Games, China leads the medal table

Paris., After eleven days of competition, the sporting events of the Paris Paralympic Games came to an end on Sunday, with China leading the medal table, hours before the closing ceremony, in which French electronic music will play a major role.

Iranian para-weightlifter Ahmad Aminzadeh won the last gold medal at stake in Paris 2024, where China confirmed its position as the great dominator of Paralympic sport.

The Asian giant, which has always topped the medal table since Athens 2004, closed the day with 94 golds, 76 silvers and 50 bronzes for a total of 220 medals, compared to 124 won by the United Kingdom (49-44-31) and 105 by the United States (36-42-27).

Sunday also saw the women’s wheelchair basketball title at stake, with the Dutch champions retaining their crown by beating the United States in the final (63-49).

In the morning, the marathon events were held, with a bittersweet taste for Spain, which won its 40th medal with the silver of Alberto Sánchez, but suffered the disqualification of Elena Congost, initially bronze in T12 (visually impaired), an event in which the Moroccan Fatima El Idrissi improved the world record by almost six minutes.

“Surreal” disqualification in the marathon

The 36-year-old Spaniard, who was competing again after winning the Paralympic title in Rio 2016, almost eight years during which she had four children, was disqualified for letting go of the rope to help her guide two metres from the finish line.

“I would like everyone to know that I have not been disqualified for cheating, but for being a person and helping my guide (…) It seems unfair and surreal to me that there is no one to reason with,” Congost criticised, disconsolate.

In T54 (wheelchair race) there was a Swiss double, for the favourites Catherine Debrunner and Marcel Hug.

Following the completion of the various marathons, Paris-2024 paid tribute to Rebecca Cheptegei on the Esplanade des Invalides. She was the Ugandan athlete who competed in the Olympic marathon in August and died this week in Kenya after being set on fire by an individual identified by the police as her partner.

All this just hours before at least 24 DJs from various generations of the ‘French Touch’, the name by which the musical genre originated in France in the 1980s and 1990s is known internationally, will set the musical mood for the last party at the Stade de France, where some 4,400 parade athletes will parade.

The host country has added to its sporting success its organisational success, both at the Olympic Games – a century after hosting the event for the last time – and at its first Paralympic Games, where the public responded and largely filled the venues for the events, creating a festive atmosphere praised by the athletes.

Paris 2024 “will be the benchmark (Paralympic) Games, in every aspect,” said the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Brazilian Andrew Parsons, at a press conference on Sunday, who stressed that the event was “more competitive than ever.”

Awareness

From a media point of view, 165 television channels from all over the world have followed the event, a record, as well as the record of participating delegations, with a total of 168, and the number of women competing, with almost 2,000 (1,983), practically double the number who took part in Sydney-2000 (988).

The record that will not be broken will be the number of tickets sold: 2.7 million were sold in London-2012, slightly more than in Paris (just over 2.5 million, according to the organisers), although the atmosphere in the different venues has been festive, taking over from the Olympic Games.

It remains to be seen whether the Games’ hiatus will leave a solid legacy in the form of awareness of the rights of people with disabilities, whether in terms of accessibility, access to employment or the practice of sport.

“We haven’t radically changed society, there is still a lot to do,” said Michael Jeremiasz, a para-tennis champion and chef de mission of the French delegation, before the Games. “But if we hadn’t had these Games, we wouldn’t have won all this time. There has never been so much investment, so much awareness.”

“My work intensifies on September 9, making sure that it is the beginning of an explosion of this awareness,” he added.

As was the case for the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, the cauldron will be extinguished in the Tuileries Garden before the closing ceremony, when the Paralympic flame will be handed over to the Los Angeles authorities, who will host the Games in 2028.