The 17th Paralympic Games was launched on Wednesday night with a four-hour sight and sound spectacular in central Paris involving the 4,000 competitors who will take part in the 11-day festival of 22 para sports as well as hundreds of dancers and musicians with and without disabilities.
For the first Paralympic opening ceremony to be held outside the main stadium, around 20,000 people lined the Avenue des Champs Elysées for the parade of participants with physical, visual and intellectual impairments before they made their way into an arena constructed for 35,000 people around the Obelisk on the Place de La Concorde.
