Paris Olympics 2024: Celebrating Diversity, Resilience, and Sustainability at events
The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games is the biggest event ever organized in France. The stats speak for themselves:? 32 sports; 329 events; 10,500 athletes.??
With all eyes on Paris as the Games draw to an end, we take a look at what we can learn from the event, the athletes and the host city. On y va!?
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Diversity shaping experiences?
One hundred years after it last hosted the Games, Paris is at a turning point in Olympic history. Not least because these will be the first-ever gender-balanced Olympic Games, with as many female as male athletes center stage.? This 50:50 allocation means the Paris 2024 Olympic Games this summer will be the first Olympics ever to achieve full gender parity – equal representation for both women and men – on the field of play.??
Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which organizes the Games, described the milestone as “one of the most important moments in the history of women at the Olympic Games, and in sport overall”.?
The growing popularity of women's sports is reshaping audience demographics, leading to significant attendance by women and children and influencing the development of sports hospitality experiences.??
That’s according to Samantha Coates and Tom Ravenhill from hospitality providers Keith Prowse who delivered a session, ‘Beyond the game: Sport hospitality insights’, at IMEX Frankfurt in May.?
They explain: "The growth of women in sport has significantly changed audience demographics and that's why this type of insight really helps us to develop our experiences to embrace the surge in interest."?
There’s been much excitement about a new addition to the Paris 2024 Olympics facilities: the very first nursery for Olympic and Paralympic parent athletes. Athletes can book private or shared appointments at the facility, in the heart of the Village Plaza, which accommodates up to six family members. Here, they have access to private spaces for nursing, a family lounge for playtime and a changing station.?
“We are seeing more and more athletes continuing in their career after starting a family. Personally, knowing it can be difficult to combine both while focusing on your dreams, doesn’t mean that you cannot be a parent and an athlete,” said Emma Terho, athletes’ commission chair for the IOC, who competed for Finland in ice hockey during the 2014 Olympic Winter Games with a young child.?
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Want to know more? Read the takeaways from the IMEX session ‘Beyond the game: Sport hospitality insights’ here.?
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Mental resilience??
Long hours of preparation, hard work and boundary-pushing - all culminating in one big event.?
Sound familiar? ?
A skill all event planners (and suppliers for that matter) share with the Olympic champions is mental resilience. It’s a topic leadership expert Holly Ransom* explores in a recent LinkedIn post.???
She explains: “A study involving ten Olympians found that mental toughness was one of the highest-ranked psychological characteristics that determines successful performance.??
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“What champions become great at is resetting themselves after a point is lost, to contend again in the next moment. They develop an ability to stop negativity in the moment before it gathers momentum and sweeps your whole game, or day or week away. They prepare for those crucial moments before they even arrive, so they can manage the emotions in the moment.”?
Want to know more? Join Holly for the new Emergent Leadership Day at IMEX America.?
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A sporting legacy?
Michel Mari from Visit Paris joined our learning program at IMEX Frankfurt to look ahead to the Games and its legacy. He said: “We’ve made a huge investment in the city ahead of the Games with new arenas and public transport improvements.”?
These new facilities will play a crucial role in the legacy of the event. Take, for example, the Aquatics Centre. After the Games, it will be transformed into a multisport facility, featuring fitness areas, a climbing wall, a skatepark and more. As for the Olympic Village, this will become a new residential district with 2,800 apartments for 6,000 people - 25 per cent of which will be social housing. This district will also include leisure, commercial, community and educational facilities.?
Want to know more? Join Michel at IMEX America where he’ll share his post-Games perspective as part of our education program.?
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Sustainability impact?
Paris 2024 has set itself the goal of halving the carbon footprint of the Games compared with the average of London 2012 and Rio 2016. They’re on course to meet this objective thanks to the measures taken to avoid, reduce and control carbon emissions:?
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Want to how to create more sustainable events??We’ve distilled our learnings, successes and controlled experiments from last year’s IMEX America into one report. We’re launching this next week – keep a lookout....?
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IMEX America takes place October 8 – 10 at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas and includes Smart Monday, a preshow education day, powered by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) on October 7.?
Registration is live – you can register for free here.????
Some great points, we are so happy to see the 50/50 gender split in terms of athletes (we especially loved that the women's marathon took the prime spot over men this year!) but there is still a long way to go when it comes to gender parity in the world of coaches.