Paris Games competitions director discusses historic gender parity

Aurelie Merle, Executive Director Sport Competitions for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, shared her experience dealing with one of the toughest jobs on the Organizing Committee with CGTN Sports Scene's Greg Laffradi.

For the first time in history, there will be the same number of female and male athletes taking part in the Olympic competitions in Paris. As a contributor to that groundbreaking accomplishment, Merle is very proud of her work.

"We're super proud to be the first Olympic Games to be gender equal in Paris, where the first time in 1900 where there were women participating, there were only two percent," Merle said in the interview.

"So having, like, gender equality show that we have Games in line with all times. But also we wanted to go one step further. We wanted to ensure that also that women's sport had the full visibility and the same as men's sports," she added.

An estimate of 10,500 athletes from around the world will compete in 329 events across 39 sports at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics between July 26 and August 11. The numbers alone indicate how challenging it is to balance TV broadcast time.

"We worked with an expert who was able to tell us how exactly we should, where we should put the different women's events to ensure that we will have equal visibility for women's sports than men," Merle said.

"And we worked, as well, with OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) for the broadcasting, and the French broadcasters as well and the international ones. We also worked with the international federations and everyone really wanted the Paris Games to be full gender parity. So with everyone around, I think we managed to reach that. And they will be some amazing new female events in the forefront," she concluded.