Olympia 2024: Leisure & Attractions Industry Supports the Olympic Idea

Photo: Aérophile (eap) While the best athletes in the world will be competing for medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris through 11 August, a number of well-known companies from the leisure industry are once again involved in the success of the world’s largest sporting event with their products and services. And not only in the form of extensive sports sponsorship – by Coca-Cola, for example, who has been among the regular Olympic Games sponsors since 1928 – but also in the fields of show and equipment, where a number of companies from our industry can be found.

One of the undisputed highlights of an opening event that otherwise rightly made negative headlines around the world, in which the actual protagonists of the Games – a total of 6,800 top athletes and sportspeople from the participating nations – were almost reduced to mere staffage, was the “Grande Finale” at the Trocadéro below the Eiffel Tower with the impressive performance by Céline Dion and the final torch relay with the Olympic Flame to its final Cauldron near the Louvre. The Olympic Cauldron was an absolute novelty this time. Extraordinarily impressive: a large ring of fire, crowned and carried up into the sky by a hot air balloon, lit up brightly and has been visible over the city every night ever since. During the day, the balloon, built by the French company Aérophile, which is renowned for such installations, is lowered to the ground so that the Olympic Flame can be viewed at close range. Incidentally, this impressive cauldron installation breaks with tradition: thanks to technological progress, the Olympic Flame shines with electricity.

Photo: Sunkid In addition to Aérophile, numerous other companies from the international leisure and attractions industry were and are involved in the major sporting event Olympia 2024. For example, the Italian swimming pool manufacturer Myrtha Pools, which installed a total of 24 stainless steel competition pools in accordance with Olympic standards for the water sports competitions in Paris, and the company Aquatique Show (a specialist in water shows and water special effects). A training centre for Olympic athletes in the town of Cesson-Sévigné, among others, commissioned the comprehensive modernisation of its facilities in the run-up to the Games to ensure optimum training conditions, including the integration of new conveyor belts from Austrian conveyor technology specialist Sunkid for the canoeing and rafting athletes. And last but not least, the new Surftown in Munich, which opens to the public soon, with its Endless Surf technology from WhiteWater West (see cover story in EAP 4/2024) also served as a training centre for professional surfers, who are now competing for the prestigious medals at the Summer Olympics... May the best win in peaceful competition, and may the Games ultimately celebrate their real stars – the top international athletes!