The 2024 Olympics in Paris officially begin with the opening ceremony on Friday, July 26, setting off a two-and-a-half-week festival of sport that comes to an end on Sunday, August 11.
It is the first time in 100 years that the French capital has hosted the Summer Games, with the majority of the events taking place in or around the city’s most iconic areas.
Three years after the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games, Paris 2024 will see a new sport, breakdancing (or breaking), added to the mix. Other modern additions like 3×3 basketball, BMX, surfing, skateboarding, and climbing all retain their spots in the schedule, but karate and baseball have been dropped.
In total, there are 32 sports, with some further broken down into separate disciplines, making 48 in total. Altogether, there will be 329 events and, therefore, 329 gold medals to fight for.
The Paris Games are the first to achieve gender parity among athletes, with 5,250 male and 5,250 female athletes set to compete. The cost of this year’s Games is expected to be about 9 billion euros (£7.6 billion), with the organising committee promising to make it the greenest Olympics in history.
This year’s opening ceremony will be the first in the history of the Summer Games that hasn’t been held inside a stadium, with nearly 11,000 athletes representing 206 national Olympic committees taking part in a parade that takes them by boat along the Seine. Some of them, though, will have already started their bid to claim a gold medal.
Athletes will be transported by boat along the River Seine, passing major landmarks like the Louvre, Notre-Dame, and Place de la Concorde on a 6-kilometer route. A mini-stadium will be set up at the Place du Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower for 30,000 spectators to watch the official lighting of the Olympic flame, with another half a million expected to line the river banks and other major sites to watch.
Ghana has nine athletes who will be competing in athletics and swimming when the competition starts. 
Ghana has Abdul Saminu for the men’s 100m and 200m and Joseph Paul Amoah, Isaac Botsio, Benjamin Azamati, Edwin Gadayi, and Fusseini Ibrahim competing in the men’s 4×100 relay. Africa high jump queen Rose Yeboah will represent the country in the women’s high jump, with Joselle Mensah and Harry Stacey taking up the 50m and 100m freestyle swimming, respectively.