The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad will be held in France from July 26 to August 11.
The opening ceremony, traditionally held in the Olympic stadium of the host city, will this time take place on the Seine, the river that runs through the French capital, where each national delegation will parade on a boat.
Ten thousand five hundred athletes will represent 204 nations at this year’s Games. The event will be marred, however, by the International Olympic Committee’s cancellation of Russia and Belarus, whose athletes will have to compete under a neutral flag, limiting participation to just 15 individual Russian athletes with no representation in team sports.
Despite its declarations of supposed neutrality, the IOC has not commented on Israel’s deadly actions in Gaza, without issuing any measures. On Monday, the Palestinian National Olympic Committee demanded that Israeli athletes be excluded, as it considers that Israel is violating the Olympic truce by bombing targets in Gaza, putting the number of Palestinian athletes killed since the beginning of the conflict in October at 400. The Palestinian delegation will be made up of eight athletes competing in six disciplines.
Among the participating delegations, for the third time, will be the International Olympic Committee’s Refugee Team, which will compete under the banner of the five interlocking rings. The IOC decided in 2015 to create this team, which symbolically represents more than 100 million displaced persons and refugees. This time it will be made up of 37 athletes, who will showcase their talent in twelve sports disciplines. Its standard-bearers in Paris will be the boxer Cindy Ngamba, from Cameroon, and the Syrian taekwondo athlete Yahya-Al-Gothani.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said: “The Refugee Olympic Team should remind us of the resilience, courage and hope of all those uprooted by war and persecution. These athletes represent what human beings can do, even in the face of extreme adversity.”