Paris Has Taken The Torch From Tokyo For The 2024 Summer Olympic Games

By Deepa Shivaram

Published August 8, 2021 at 12:04 PM CDT

The French Aerial Patrol fly by the Eiffel Tower in Paris as part of the handover ceremony of Tokyo 2020 to Paris 2024, as Paris will be the next Summer Games host in 2024.

As the Olympic games concluded in Tokyo, the next city to host, Paris, has already started its celebration.

During the closing ceremony on Sunday, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo received and waved an Olympic flag in the Tokyo stadium, a traditional pass to the next city. But the celebration then had a few twists to how the handover is usually done.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, right, holds the Olympic flag during the closing ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan.

The French national anthem was played by the National Orchestra of France in a filmed video that took viewers all over sites in Paris.

Then, a live broadcast took viewers straight into the handover celebration in the streets of Paris. The Paris 2024 Olympic flag was unfurled from the Eiffel Tower, which organizers said set a world record as the largest flag ever flown — it's almost the size of a football field. And the Patrouille Acrobatique de France, conducted a flyover that displayed the country's flag in the sky.

Spectators gather by the Eiffel Tower in Paris as part of the handover ceremony during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic games.

Visuals presented at the event also showcased what the Paris games may look like in three years. Organizers are planning to put the competitions in the center of the city, with the opening ceremony slated to take place along the Seine River in the middle of Paris, rather than a stadium.

French president Emmanuel Macron delivered short remarks, saying the updated Olympic motto: "Faster, Higher, Stronger. Together." On stage near the Eiffel Tower were also French Olympic athletes who had returned from the Tokyo games.

Avec Aki on a pris un peu d’avance sur la #ClosingCeremony en attendant le vrai passage de relais #Tokyo2020 -> #Paris2024 sur 🌏 dans quelques heures
🇯🇵🤜🤛🇫🇷
With the @Tokyo2020 @Olympics ending today and the next #Olympics to be @Paris2024, @Aki_Hoshide and I held a ceremony pic.twitter.com/7dpYBr4Xwu
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) August 8, 2021

The handover even took viewers out of this world — literally. Aboard the International Space Station, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet tweeted that he and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide held their own Olympic handover and displayed the Olympic flag together.

Paris has not hosted the Olympic games in almost 100 years; the last time was in 1924.