Paris hosted the Olympics 100 years ago, but the Summer Games still manage to feel fresh today.
GENEVA, Switzerland — Exactly 100 years since the Olympics were last held in Paris and 128 years since the modern games were revived in Athens, the Summer Olympics could look fresh for the 33rd Games.
Some of the innovations that will be showcased at the Paris Olympics include:
Opening ceremony
This historic first in Summer Olympic history will kick off the Paris Olympics and become an iconic Olympic spectacle: thousands of athletes will march west along the Seine at sunset on Friday, July 26, in a convoy of boats heading west toward the Eiffel Tower.
The ambitious idea was to take the atmosphere-defining show out of stadiums, where people paid a steep entrance fee, and into the city, where many more people could see it.
A crowd of 320,000 is expected to gather along the riverside along the six-kilometer (3.7-mile) route from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Pont d'Iena.
Tickets will be free for the approximately 220,000 invited spectators who will watch from the upper bank of the river and who will pass security checks.
An estimated 100,000 paying spectators, some with luxury hospitality packages, will watch the parade from downstream along the riverbank and around Trocadero Square, where it will end with a view of the Eiffel Tower.
It's the most ambitious plan for a major Olympic ceremony — the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics tested a non-traditional opening in downtown Buenos Aires — and also the most dangerous security risk.
The original plan for 600,000 spectators would have made the city more spontaneous but less safe.
French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that the location of the riverside parade could be changed if terrorists attack Paris again, as they did in 2015. The closing ceremony on August 11 is scheduled to take place at the Stade de France national stadium, where athletics events will be held in the final week of the Games.
“We are professionals, so of course we have a Plan B, a Plan C and so on,” Macron said in December.
Ideally, Paris will perform at their best.
Gender equality
Paris was the place where women competed in the first Olympic Games in 1900, with 22 out of 997 athletes competing.
In addition to tennis and golf, the girls also competed in team sports such as sailing, croquet and equestrian.
Great Britain's Charlotte Cooper won the tennis singles title, becoming the first woman to win an individual gold medal.
For the first time, 10,500 athletes were entered in 329 events, with an equal split between women and men.
“This is our contribution to a more gender-equal world,” IOC President Thomas Bach said.
In 1900, the proportion of female athletes rose from 2.2% to 23% by the 1984 Los Angeles Games, when American Joan Benoit won the first women's Olympic marathon.
Los Angeles saw the debut of rhythmic gymnastics and what was then called synchronized swimming, now called artistic swimming, with the men's event making its Olympic debut in Paris.
As the total number of female athletes approaches 50 percent, the IOC has begun to put pressure on traditionally all-male Olympic teams, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei fielding women for the first time at the 2012 London Games.
For the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, teams were encouraged to select one male and one female flag bearer for the opening ceremony, with 48% doing so.
To achieve gender equality on the playing field, the IOC's challenge is to one day have a female president. Since 1894, nine men have led the IOC.
The next presidential election is scheduled for March 2025, but the Olympic organizing committee has only ever had one female candidate: In 2001, Anita DeFrantz, a U.S. rowing bronze medalist at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, lost the first race of five candidates, which was won by Jacques Rogge.
Prize Money
In Paris, in a controversial break with tradition, prize money for gold medallists will be paid directly from Olympic revenues.
But the IOC doesn't think so, in an apparent contradiction to a promise made in April by World Athletics, the sport's governing body.
At the Paris Games, $50,000 will be awarded for each of the 48 gold medals. At the Los Angeles 2028 Games, World Athletics wants to pay prize money for silver and bronze medals as well.
It is common for Olympic athletes to receive prize money from state governments and national Olympic organizations.
France plans to pay about $85,000 to each of its gold medalists. The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee is running “Project Gold,” which will pay gold medalists $37,500, silver medalists $22,500 and bronze medalists $15,000.
But the $2.4 million donation announced by World Athletics president Sebastian Coe will come directly from athletics' share of the IOC's billions of dollars in broadcast and sponsorship revenue.
For Tokyo, the IOC set aside about $540 million for the collection of Summer Olympic sports federations known as ASOIF to distribute among its member organizations. Track and field received the most, about $39.5 million, because it is the top Olympic sport.
The IOC does not want to see this trend spread and would prefer that governing bodies spend Olympic revenues on development projects. World Athletics is one of the few organisations with the financial means to spare to reward top athletes.
Breakthrough
Breakdancing will make its Olympic debut in Paris.
Breaking's 50-year journey, which began in the Bronx, will reach Concorde Square on August 9th and 10th when 16 breaking boys and 16 breaking girls will compete.
The sport's path to the Olympics, overseen by the World DanceSport Federation, will follow the downtown opening ceremony concept tested in Buenos Aires in 2018 and brought to life in Paris.
Breaking may only get one shot. Before it had a chance to prove itself, the 2028 Games in Los Angeles were cancelled, with organizers there opting instead to feature cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash as inaugural events at the modern Olympic Games.
It remains to be seen whether Brisbane will give Breaking a second chance in 2032.
Enjoy surfing
Take a postcard image of the Paris Olympics and add surfing on the beaches of Tahiti.
While it's not unusual for events to take place half a world away from the Olympic host city, this one is planned and simultaneous.
In 1956, due to Australian horse quarantine regulations, the equestrian events were held in Stockholm, Sweden, five months before the opening ceremony in Melbourne.
Paris organizers persisted with their desire to hold the surfing events in French Polynesia in the Pacific, despite the IOC's preference for a mainland location such as the Atlantic resort of Biarritz.
The Te Ahupo plan was approved, and the ensuing controversy was not about excessively long flights, but about the construction of an underwater inspector's tower, which could potentially damage the coral reef.
