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14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 JULY 2024 ANALYSIS KURT SANSONE ksansone@mediatoday.com.mt The Olympics: From breakdance The Paris 2024 Olympics got underway on Friday with a spectacular opening ceremony held on the river Seine amid heightened security. The Olympic games will end on Sunday 11 August. The following are some curiosities about the games in Paris and the Olympics in general. Breakdance is a sport Breakdance or breaking, as it is known in sport jargon, first featured in the summer youth Olympic Games in Bue- nos Aires in 2018. After its outstanding success, break- ing was added to the Paris 2024 Olympic programme as a new sport. The breaking competition comprises two events—one for men and one for women—where 16 B-Boys and 16 B-Girls will face off in spectacular solo battles. The events will take place at a tem- porary venue set up at Place de La Concorde, which has been transformed into an urban sport park for the games. Surfing in... Tahiti The Olympic games will be held across several venues, some of which are outside Paris. And in line with Paris 2024's ambition to spread the games across France, the surf- ing competition will be held in the overseas French territory of Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean. Tahiti is part of French Poly- nesia and lies 4,400km south of the US State of Hawaii. The Olympic Village in Tahiti is based on temporary facilities modelled on traditional Poly- nesian homes known as 'farès'. They will be relocated and re- deployed as social housing af- ter the games. Sport climbing debuts Paris 2024 sees the inclusion of sport climbing as an Olym- pic discipline. The Le Bour- get climbing venue is one of only two facilities – the oth- er being the Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis – to be built specifically for the Olympic games. The climbing venue is situ- ated in Seine-Saint-Denis area and five climbing walls (four outdoor and one indoor) will be used during the games. The indoors facilities will be re- tained for use by the commu- nity after the Olympics, while the outdoor structures will be redeployed elsewhere. Beach volley beneath the Eiffel Tower The Champs de Mars beneath the Eiffel Tower will host a temporary massive outdoor arena where beach volleyball and blind football events will take place. The venue will be dismantled after the games. Refugee team The IOC Refugee Olympic Team will be competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics with 37 athletes, hosted by 15 Nation- al Olympic Committees. They will compete across 12 sports. The team represents more than 100 million forcibly displaced people worldwide and compet- ed for the first time in the 2016 summer Olympics. In Paris, the team is led by the Chef de Mis- sion, Masomah Ali Zada; her- self a member of the Refugee Olympic Team Tokyo 2020. The IOC Executive Board se- lected the Refugee Olympic The French authorities have put up a games-time force of up to 45,000 police and gendarmes, also backed up by a 10,000-strong contingent of soldiers that has set up the largest military camp in Paris since World War I The beach volley court beneath the Eiffel Tower