Paris 2024 Hails Tokyo for Successful Olympics Amid Pandemic

Paris 2024 CEO Etienne Thobois praised Tokyo on Friday for its “remarkable” ability to pull off the Olympics amid the COVID-19 pandemic and said Paris was ready to take the baton as it prepares to stage the Games in three years’ time.

Thobois said that Paris organisers would be as ready as possible to face whatever challenges come their way to deliver a successful games.

“My first reaction (about holding the Games during the pandemic) is that we need to thank our Japanese friends, to be able to pull that off in this particular situation is kind of amazing, it’s a remarkable achievement,” said Thobois, who was visiting Tokyo for the Paralympics.

“They had to cope with it, and they did a fantastic job. Obviously we hope that in three years from now, this will be behind us, or not in the same level of worries. But definitely we learned from that,” Thobois added.

Tokyo organisers, who had already postponed the Olympics by a year due to the pandemic, made the unprecedented decision to hold the Games without spectators in venues to help prevent the spread of the virus.

They also implemented a series of protective measures including frequent testing, mandatory mask wearing and a bubble environment, outlined in “playbooks” distributed to athletes and other Olympic participants.

The Tokyo Paralympics are set to close on Sunday which will start the countdown to the next Summer Games, opening in Paris on July 26, 2024.

“The fundamentals for Paris 2024 are there. We are ready to take on those challenges and we will need to adapt. And that’s what we’ll do,” Thobois said.

“We’re talking about the pandemic today, maybe tomorrow it’s a heat wave, you know every Games has had its challenges in the past, and we’ll try to be as ready as possible to face those.”