First delegations arrive at Paris Paralympics athletes' village

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00The Olympic Village just north of Paris in Saint-Denis is coming back to life.

00:05Delegations from across the globe began arriving Wednesday to compete in the

00:09Paralympic Games with athletes moving into a newly refurbished Paralympic

00:14Village adapted to meet their specific needs.

00:17We also have something to do.

00:19We have a talent to show to the world that yes, persons with disability,

00:22disability is inability because if you are disabled it doesn't mean you can do

00:28anything for yourself, you can't do anything for your country, you can't do

00:31anything for the world.

00:33I think it will be more, more better for Paralympic

00:36because a lot of athletes have big story behind and I think it is very

00:44interesting for people.

00:45The Paralympic athletes will compete in 22 sports at

00:49many iconic venues in Paris which in some cases have also been modified to

00:54meet the specific needs of each event.

00:56That includes the beach volleyball venue at the Eiffel Tower which has been

01:00adapted to host the blind football competition.

01:03We chose not to remove the sand because it weighs 400 tons and to remove it

01:10would be very complicated in terms of timing so we chose to cover it over instead.

01:15The Paralympics will run from August 28th to September 8th and more

01:20than 1.7 million tickets have already been sold.

01:24Ten sports are nearly sold out but about 800,000 tickets are still available.

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