France throws one last party for the Paris Olympics

PARIS, France — The curtain will come down on the Paris’ feel-good summer with a grand parade of French athletes on the Champs Elysées on Saturday as the country throws one last party to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Parade of Champions will include 182 French Olympic representatives, including 78 medallists, and 137 Paralympic participants with 50 para-athletes who medalled at the Paris Games. About 70,000 spectators are expected along the parade’s route on the French capital’s famed avenue that will end on a ring-shaped stage around the Arc de Triomphe monument. Hundreds of the Games’ volunteers and officials are also expected to attend.

Organizers have promised a celebration of French sport on par with the spectacular and audacious opening and closing of the July 26-Aug. 11 Olympics and the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympic ceremonies.

“Among us, we call it the 5th ceremony,” Thierry Reboul, the director of ceremonies, told French media. “We tried to include the same elements to this show as we did to the four ceremonies this summer: surprise, emotion and sharing.”

President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister, Michel Barnier, will attend the ceremony. Macron is expected to address the crowd and decorate French Olympians, including the star swimmer and judoka, Léon Marchand and Teddy Riner, with state honors.

Macron's celebration of the Olympic spirit that he said has produced “national harmony” comes against the backdrop of a harsh political reality and a deeply divided society following an inconclusive legislative elections in July, just before the start of the Paris Games.

Faced with a hung parliament, social tensions and ballooning debt, Macron earlier this month appointed Barnier, a veteran conservative and European Union's former Brexit negotiator, to form a new government.

Macron's decision caused fury in the left-wing coalition that won the most seats in the National Assembly, but not enough to govern alone, leaving France’s powerful lower house of parliament with no party holding a majority.

Barnier said he will present his ministers next week. The New Popular Front coalition vowed protests and censure against Macron and the new government, insisting that the president has dismissed the popular vote that gave the leftist alliance the mandate to govern.