Paris 2024 Paralympic Games open

This time in Paris, eight athletes and one guide runner will compete as part of the largest-ever Refugee Paralympic Team. They are based in six countries and will compete across six sports.

France's delegation concluded the parade of athletes along the Champs-Elysees to Place de la Concorde.

Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, gave a speech to welcome the athletes.

"Even if all your life stories are unique, you have often lived with people listing all the things you are unable to do. Until the day you first entered a sports club. On that day, you understood that sport would not impose any limits. On that day, you understood that sport would never put you in a box. Like all athletes, you trained, you sweated, you failed and you got back up again. And you became the great champions that we are honored to have with us tonight."

International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons followed with a speech of his own.

"At a time of growing global conflict, increasing hate, and rising exclusion, let sport be the social glue that brings us together," he said.

"Every person with a disability deserves the opportunity to thrive and live life free from barriers, free from discrimination and free from marginalisation," he added.

After the final relays in the Tuileries Garden, five torchbearers lit the Paris 2024 cauldron together. The cauldron rose into the sky once again, heralding the return of the Games.