Ciryl Gane will carry the Olympic torch on June 4.
Seven weeks earlier than the video games formally kick off in Paris, France on July 26, the previous UFC interim heavyweight world champion will carry the torch in his hometown of La Roche-sur-Yon.
“Proud to hold the flame,” Gane wrote in a translated submit on Instagram. “Hoping to sooner or later see MMA in an Olympic occasion.”
Greater than 10,000 athletes will converge on ‘The Metropolis of Gentle’ this summer season vying for one of the coveted prizes in all of aggressive sports activities — an Olympic medal.
Kicking off on the ultimate Friday in July, the opening ceremony can be held on the Seine River with boats representing every nationwide delegation and touring east to west, winding their means by the middle of Paris the place the athletes will compete for the next 16 days.
Along with the athletes, the Olympic Video games will play host to over 40,000 volunteers and 20,000 accredited journalists. The 329 scheduled occasions will emanate from 35 totally different venues, producing 350,000 hours of broadcast tv. Hundreds of thousands of spectators will watch the festivities stay from Paris whereas billions extra will watch from their houses and cell units across the globe.
The 2024 Summer season Olympics debuts a brand new sport — but it surely’s not MMA
Of the 32 totally different sports activities on show, there can be one newcomer to the 2024 Video games — Breaking.
Also called break dancing, breaking is an city dance type that grew to become a staple of hip-hop tradition within the Nineteen Seventies. In response to the official Olympics web site, the occasion will characteristic “16 B-Boys and 16 B-Ladies dealing with off in spectacular solo battles” all whereas improvising their strikes to the beat of the DJ’s tracks.
Breaking would be the solely new sport launched at this yr’s video games, however sport climbing, skateboarding, and browsing will make its return to the Olympics after debuting in Tokyo 4 years in the past.
Sadly, blended martial arts is not going to be a part of the video games, however many battle followers are holding out hope that the game will sooner or later grace the Olympic stage. For now, fight sports activities aficionados can get pleasure from karate, judo, wrestling, and boxing which have been part of the summer season spectacular for a while.
In 2022, the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) granted provisional recognition to sambo, kickboxing, and Muay Thai, although none of them can be making their debut in 2024. Maybe we’ll see them on the 2028 video games when the Olympics head to Los Angeles, Calif.
