The London Paralympic Games will take place 17 days after the closing of the Olympic Games, from this Wednesday, August 29 to Sunday, September 9, 2012. In 11 days of competition, 503 gold medals will be awarded. They are set to be the largest ever organized, with 166 countries represented, 4,200 athletes—which makes it the largest sporting event in terms of participants after the Olympic Games—and almost all of the 2.5 million tickets already sold, a first.
The Queen of England will be present at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, this Wednesday, August 29, at the Olympic Stadium.
However, while in Great Britain, Channel 4 promises several hours of daily ‘live’ coverage, no major national channel will broadcast live in France: 16 hours of live coverage per day for the Olympic Games. Not a minute for the Paralympic Games!!!
The adventure continues for Team Conseil Général 06 with the entry of champions from the Côte d’Azur in new medal opportunities for Elodie Lorandi and Frédéric Bussi (swimming), Florence Doumesche-Guedoun (basketball), and Christine Schoenn (tennis)!
The Paralympic Games represent the second-largest sporting event in the world in terms of scale after the Olympic Games. The Olympics, like the Paralympics, are organized by a single Organizing Committee, LOCOG, chaired by Sebastian Coe, under the auspices of the IOC for the Olympics and the IPC for the Paralympics.
Led by Gérard Masson, Head of the London 2012 Paralympic Delegation, President of the French Paralympic & Sports Committee, and the French Handisport Federation, and by Jean-Paul Moreau, Head of Mission, the French delegation will consist of nearly 280 people, including 154 athletes, accompanied by 4 guides (athletics), 3 pilots (cycling), 1 coxswain (rowing), and 2 sighted goalkeepers (blind football).
Damien Seguin (sailing) has been designated as the flag bearer of the delegation. He succeeds Assia El’Hannouni (athletics) who led the French delegation during the opening ceremony in Beijing in 2008.
Ultimately, France 2, which had initially planned only the ‘image of the day’ at around 8:30 p.m., has agreed to schedule a daily magazine at around 5 p.m. A 52-minute program will air on France 3 in the late evening but the opening and closing ceremonies will only be broadcast on the France O channel.
TF1, for its part, promised features in its various news programs, while TV5 Monde has planned a series of special broadcasts.
