I attended my very first Summer Olympic Games in 1992 in Barcelona, Spain – just like my country, South Africa, which competed at the 1992 Summer Olympic Games for the first time since 1960, with 93 competitors, 68 men and 25 women, who took part in 87 events in 19 sports.
South Africa was permitted to rejoin the Olympic Movement after its citizens voted to abolish apartheid.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games – officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad and branded as Paris 2024 is an international multi-sport event taking place from 24 July to 11 August 2024 in France, with the opening ceremony having taken place on 26 July.
Paris is the host city, with events held in 16 additional cities spread across Metropolitan France and one subsite in Tahiti, French Polynesia.
For the first time in the history of the Summer Olympics, the opening ceremony – the largest in Games history – did not take place in a stadium, but in the heart of the city along its main artery, the Seine River, with boats carrying each national delegation. The boats were equipped with cameras to allow television and online viewers to see the athletes up close. Winding their way from east to west, the 10,500 athletes crossed through the centre of Paris, the overall playing field for the Games, where these competitors are displaying their sporting prowess over 16 days. The parade came to the end of its 6km route in front of the Trocadéro, where the remaining elements of Olympic protocol and final shows took place.
The ceremony was open to as many people as possible – residents from Paris and the surrounding region, as well as visitors from all over France and around the world – with 80 giant screens and strategically placed speakers allowing everyone to enjoy the magical atmosphere of this show as it reverberated throughout the French capital.
Paris was awarded the Games at the 131st International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Lima, Peru, on 13 September 2017. After multiple withdrawals that left only Paris and Los Angeles in contention, the IOC approved a process to award concurrently the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympic Games to the two remaining candidate cities. Both of the bids were praised for highly technical plans and innovative ways to use a record-breaking number of existing and temporary facilities.
Having previously hosted in 1900 and 1924, Paris became the second city ever to host the Summer Olympics three times, after London, which hosted the 1908, 1948 and 2012 Games. Paris 2024 marks the centenary of Paris 1924 and Chamonix 1924, which in turn marks the centenary of the Winter Olympics, and is the sixth Olympic Games hosted by France – three Summer Olympics and three Winter Olympics – and the first French Olympics since the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville.
The Summer Games returned to the traditional four-year Olympiad cycle, after the 2020 edition was postponed and instead took place in 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paris 2024 features the debut of breakdancing as an Olympic sport and will be the final Olympic Games held during the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach. The 2024 Games are expected to cost €9-billion.
By comparison, the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona took place from 25 July to 9 August 1992. The Barcelona Games were the 22nd occurrence of the modern Olympic Games.
The 1992 Games were perhaps the most successful modern Olympics. More than 9,300 athletes representing 169 countries participated. The opening ceremony featured the last recorded live performance of Freddie Mercury, who was already beginning to suffer from Aids. He died in 1991, so the recording of the song was played over a travelogue of the city at the start of the international broadcast of the opening ceremony of the 1992 Summer Olympics.
The Dream Team won the gold medal in basketball and was inducted as a unit into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. Fermín Cacho won the 1,500 metres in his home country, earning Spain’s first Olympic gold medal in a running event.
Chinese diver Fu Mingxia, then 13, became one of the youngest Olympic gold medallists of all time. For the duration of the Olympics, the Vila Olímpica neighbourhood served as the official residence of participating athletes, and the name stuck. The development brought new life and vigour to a historically rundown area. From the beginning, the site was conceived as a space of quality housing, public green spaces and wide sprawling avenues oriented towards the coast. The redesign also created new public beaches, like Bogatell, Nova Icària and Mar Bella. Over time, the area gradually transformed into one of the city’s most vibrant entertainment zones, with newly constructed bars, restaurants and seaside snack bars – all concentrated in a new tourist-friendly part of the city.
Rarely in the history of a city has there been an opportunity to undertake such a wide-ranging transformation.
The subsequent urban development was defined by joining the European Community and the consequent internationalisation of the economy that put pressure on cities to compete in the global arena. The transformation of its urban planning improved the city’s international profile, by way of its appeal as a tourist destination and the historical importance of all the changes that the Olympics created.
The hotel sector added 5,000 new hotel rooms; tourism increased enormously by two million visitors in 1992 and 3 million in 1997; and the city has become the leading Mediterranean port for pleasure cruises. Barcelona is firmly on the map today, with a strong image.
In 1986, the IOC voted to change the schedule of the Olympic Games so that the Summer and Winter Games would be held in different years. To adjust to this new schedule, the Lillehammer Games in Norway were held in 1994, the only time that two Winter Games have been staged two instead of four years apart. DM
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Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony is the first not to take place in a stadium
The 1992 Games were perhaps the most successful modern Olympics. More than 9,300 athletes represented 169 countries, including South Africa for the first time since apartheid.
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