Samaranch said that Olympism is at stake in Paris 2024

Juan Antonio Samaranch, vice-president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that the Olympic Movement “is at stake” in Paris 2024, because the event must be “the symbol needed to change the atrocious dynamics that the planet is experiencing”.

The Spanish sports leader stressed the importance of making the Olympic Games a success: “We are 105 days away from Paris 2024, where we all play a lot. Paris aims to bring the Olympic spirit out of the stadiums, from the opening ceremony, along six kilometers of the Seine River, to the competitions at La Concorde, the Champs de Mars or Versailles. It’s a new, different exercise, very well done by the French and we have a lot of hope that it will work out well,” said Samaranch, who attended the presentation of the book 366 stories (and more) of the Olympic Games that you should know this Thursday at the headquarters of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE).

The Games, Samaranch added, “are one of the few living, current, successful examples that demonstrate that the world’s young people are much more united than what is said about them.”

In the midst of the complex geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine, in which the IOC has taken a position excluding Russian and Belarusian athletes since March 2022, Samaranch had a message in this regard: “The Games are a symbol that is needed to change that atrocious dynamic,” he stressed. “In Paris 2024, Israeli and Palestinian athletes will be living side by side. Ukrainians and those with Russian passports will be independent, all under the same roof,” said the vice-president, son of the former president of the IOC.

Samaranch reiterated his full confidence in the French State in terms of security, the issue that generates the most concern in the run-up to the Olympic Games: “At the IOC, we are no one to say that they put a gendarme on this or that door.”