Olympic champions Armand “Mondo” Duplantis, Karsten Warholm and Renaud Lavillenie, present Wednesday in the Paris region, declared that they “did not think” of attending the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games on July 26, while the Ukrainian Yaroslava Mahuchikh, a high jump specialist, “doesn’t know yet”.
For the first time in the history of the Games, the opening ceremony of Paris-2024 will take place outside a stadium, along the Seine.
“I think my preparation will last beyond this opening. So I think I will arrive in Paris afterwards,” declared Duplantis, reigning Olympic pole vault champion, during an event organized in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) by the equipment manufacturer Puma.
The Swedish phenomenon, who is preparing to experience the second Games of his career three years after his title in Tokyo, however judges that parading the delegations on the river is a “cool” idea.
Same case for the Norwegian Karsten Warholm, Olympic champion and three-time world champion in the 400m hurdles, who skipped the opening ceremonies in Rio in 2016 and in Tokyo in 2021.
“I think I will arrive three, four days before the start of my event,” he said during the same event. The first round of the 400m hurdles is scheduled for August 5.
Warholm, however, plans to “be in front of the television to attend the ceremony” in the same way as pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie, Olympic champion in London in 2012, who prefers “not to lose energy”.
“I will be better off on my sofa watching her in peace,” said Lavillenie, who has not yet assured her qualification for Paris-2024. He has until June 30 to cross the minimum bar (5.82 m).
Finally, the Ukrainian Yaroslava Mahuchikh, bronze medalist in Tokyo, will be “in Paris before the Games” but she “has not yet planned” her presence or not at the ceremony.
