A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics: User Hawkeye7 opens up on his experience as a media representative following the Australian team at the latest Summer Paralympics in Paris.
In 2011, the Australian Paralympic Committee (now Paralympics Australia) commenced a project to document its history. This included collecting documents and museum pieces and conducting oral history interviews with Paralympians. An online component was recognised as being important, and Wikipedia was identified as part of that. Since then, Paralympics Australia and Wikimedia Australia have collaborated to produce thousands of articles that keep receiving millions of page-views each year. As part of the project, I attended the Paralympic Games in London in 2012, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and now in Paris in 2024 as a media representative, with accreditation supplied by Paralympics Australia. This time, I took a photographer, GailLeenstra, with me.
Media accreditation meant that I had access to the media tribunes at the venues and could attend any game, even when the event was sold out (as was usually the case). It meant that I could visit the Paralympic Village and interview athletes after the game in what is called the Mixed Zone. It meant that we could use the buses of the TC, the Olympic transport system. It meant we had access to the resources of the Main Press Centre (MPC) and the Venue Media Centres (VMCs), which provided wired and wireless internet access, desks to work at, staff to help us, and lockers to store our equipment. It meant that my photographer had access to prime photographic positions not accessible to the public. It also meant that she had access to the Nikon store at the Stade de France, where she was able to get some of her equipment repaired and borrow some very expensive equipment for the duration of the games to supplement the gear she had brought with her from Australia – all for free.
The image of Wikipedia has undergone a dramatic transformation in the time I have been working on the Australian Paralympic Project. In London in 2012, there was a tendency of the mainstream media to regard us as not being "real journalists". There was none of that in Paris, quite the opposite in fact; mainstream media representatives repeatedly told us how much they appreciated our efforts, how they used Wikipedia as a reference all the time, and how impressed they were with its accuracy.
Support from Paralympics Australia did not end in Australia. In Paris, they had set up headquarters at a site near the Paralympic Village known as "Our Mob", which contained meeting rooms, a TV studio, dining room and a McCafé concession (McDonald's being one of their sponsors). Tim Mannion, the General Manager of Communications, gave generous and welcome assistance and support to our efforts, including providing passes to the opening and closing ceremonies. Unlike the Olympic opening ceremony, the Paralympic opening ceremony was held in beautiful weather. Some 65,000 spectators packed into the Place de la Concorde for the first ever Paralympic opening ceremony to be held outside a stadium. GailLeenstra was one of a select group of photographers chosen to accompany the lighting of the Paralympic cauldron.
In Sydney, London and Rio, multiple venues were concentrated in a multi-sport precinct, but in Paris, the venues were widely scattered around the city. This is a model considered by many cities planning to hold the Olympics and Paralympics, because it allows the city to make use of existing facilities, saving the substantial cost of building new ones. It is not cheap, however! It came at a substantial cost in increased security, transportation and manpower through duplication. Venues required considerable upgrades, refurbishment and fitting out for the games. Three new venues had to be built, and Paris Metro lines were extended. Not to mention the 1.6 billion euros spent on cleaning up the Seine and Marne to make them fit to swim in. The police presence was overwhelming, with about 45,000 police and 10,000 troops on hand. All were heavily armed, with automatic weapons in case Hamas decided to put in an appearance. Roads near the venues were closed to vehicle traffic.
Getting from one venue to another involved a trip on the Paris Metro using the Navigo cards issued to us as part of our media kit. Each day we criss-crossed the city on the Metro as we moved from one venue to the next. Fortunately, the Metro was super-efficient, with trains leaving every couple of minutes. Getting to venues in the metropolitan area took about a half an hour. (The locals told us that the Metro had never been so efficient nor, with the enhanced police presence, had they ever felt safer.) This meant that each day started with critical decisions about what events we would cover that day. Priority was given to events with Australian participation (especially medal chances), since our media accreditation was so generously provided by Paralympics Australia, but the athletes of other countries (especially the English-speaking ones) were by no means neglected. A mobile phone app told us which trains and buses to take to get from one place to another. It knew the location of the venues, train stations and bus stops, the bus and train schedules, and how crowded they were, encouraging you to take less crowded services.
As it turned out, there were some other foreign Wikipedians present, but they lacked our accreditation and (quite understandably) had different priorities. This meant that Wikipedia had broad coverage and having Australian Wikipedians on site was fully justified by the coverage. We tried to see as many sports as possible: our coverage included Boccia, Cycling, Equestrian, Paracanoe, Triathlon, Wheelchair Basketball and Wheelchair Rugby. Cycling and Equestrian events were located well out of town, requiring a day trip on the Metro, Réseau Express Régional, and the TC.
Between 23 August and 9 September, articles created by the History of the Paralympic movement in Australia project garnered a total amount of 2,226,684 page views, while more than 1,200 images were uploaded. These pages and pictures will be a lasting legacy, to be enjoyed by readers for years to come.
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