Paris curtain ready to be drawn for unique opening ceremony

Seventeen days after the curtain came down on the Olympic Games, Paris is all set for round two as the 17th Paralympic Games kick-off this evening in the French capital.

The opening ceremony will take a leaf out of the Olympic playbook – in the left-field approach rather than the weather, with temperatures expected to be in the 30s during the day – and Thomas Jolly is once again the man responsible for a ceremony like no other.

Jolly has decided against the traditional stadium approach to an opening ceremony, with athletes parading through the Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde, the largest square in Paris.

A square a with a bloody past – King Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were famously guillotined there in 1793 – for Team Ireland members, it's all about keeping their own heads with competition looming.

Table-tennis player Colin Judge and sprinter Orla Comerford will be Irish flagbearers, but with 18 athletes in action over the first two days, less than half of the 35-strong team are expected to be part of the official parade.

2016 Paralympian Peter Ryan, who will form part of RTÉ’s coverage in Paris, says it is a tricky situation all round.

"Everyone wants to go," he says. "You are trading off the human versus the athlete. A lot of life decisions over the Paralympic cycle have been put through the filter of, 'does this make me better or worse at my sport?’ This is the final time you have to do it.

"The opening ceremony is a phenomenal experience. For para sort, you don’t tend to get those feverish atmospheres and huge crowds. Anyone that goes to it, it’s one of the highlights of their life.

"For the people that don’t go, you just can’t dwell on it. It’s one more entry into the catalogue of what you