This summer Paris will welcome sports people from all of the world at “The Olympic and Paralympic Games of Paris 2024”; for the first time in history the games will be presented as a single event with unified symbols. Postage stamps of Olympic and Paralympic athletes have been created following this lead and for their theme they combine the best-known attraction of the French capital, the Eiffel Tower and the selected sport, this time, archery. The presentation of a single event demonstrates the ever-increasing convergence of the global Olympic and Paralympic movements which is also represented by intensive cooperation between the SPV (Slovak Paralympic Committee) and SOSC (Slovak Olympic and Sports Committee). 

     It will be the seventeenth time summer sports representatives have participated in the Paralympics. Over eleven days (28th August to 8th September), 4,400 Paralympic athletes will compete for 549 sets of medals in 22 sports. A novelty will be the sports held within venues throughout Paris in some of the most iconic locations: not only at the Eiffel Tower, but also in Versailles, Les Invalides and other attractive locations. The opening ceremony will take place at Place de la Concorde. 

     Slovak Paralympic athletes will be defending the eleven medals won at Tokio 2020 that included five golds, two silvers and four bronzes. Once again, Slovak hopes will be mainly pinned on the para shooting, para cycling, para table tennis and para archery. In the para archery, our key competitor is Marcel Pavlík, who is shown on the postage stamp. He tuned up for the Paralympic Games when he won the European Championship Pairs title and a bronze medal in the individual. He is determined to fight for his first Paralympic medal in Paris. 

     Since 1994, under the flag of the independent Slovakia, Slovak Paralympic athletes have won a total of 131 medals in the Paralympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games, 43 of which were gold. The whole world is looking forward to these exceptional Games and we believe that this impressive collection of medals will again be increased in Paris.

 Ing. Roman Végh