Paris-2024: parents question ticket charges for babies – 03/16/2024 – Sport

Surprise for those who have started or are about to start fatherhood and are planning to go to the Paris Games. Your babies will only be able to enter the Olympic venues with their own ticket. Some have already asked for a change to this rule.

When Margaux Giddings, a 33-year-old nurse, bought her tickets to the Olympic event last year, her baby hadn’t yet been born. In the first phase of sales, she purchased gymnastics tickets. Then she got pregnant and her life changed.

“I’m breastfeeding my baby and he will be five months old at the time of the Games,” this Bayonne resident explains to AFP. “That stops me from leaving him. I would like to take him with me in a sling or in a kangaroo.”

The regulations for the Games (26 July to 11 August) state that “all spectators will need a valid ticket to access the Olympic venue, including children of all ages”.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard the babies needed their own place,” adds Tom Baker, a 37-year-old Londoner who has tickets to the Games and is expecting his first baby with his wife Kate in May.

He contacted Paris-2024 and was advised to buy tickets for the Paralympic Games, where there will be reduced rates for children, unlike the Games.

“I thought: wait a minute! We bought tickets a year and a half ago for the event, we didn’t know we were going to have a baby,” he explains to AFP. “We cannot solve the problem by buying other tickets because they are already sold.”

He and Kate, as well as his brother and mother, spent around 3,000 euros (R$16,300) to watch the canoeing and beach volleyball competitions.

Different approaches

The Paris Games organizing committee, already criticized for the price of tickets, is maintaining, for now, its decision to require a ticket from all spectators, including babies.

“In general, Paris-2024 does not recommend that parents take their children under four years of age to competition venues,” the committee said in a statement sent to AFP.

“Paris-2024 invites consideration of the environment of sporting venues, which may not be adapted to the well-being of young children,” he added.

In other competitions, policies vary. At the European Championships and the football World Cup, children of all ages must be seated and many big clubs advise against taking babies. In other sports such as rugby, cricket or athletics, babies can enter without paying a ticket.

At the London 2012 Games, the same regulations were established as in Paris 2024, but the organization modified it due to public and media pressure.

Adrien Pol, a social worker from Liège (Belgium) who is expecting his first child in June, believes that Paris-2024 will also change its rules.

“It’s discriminatory towards women. We want our baby to be breastfed, so my partner Marine will have to keep him. Maybe she will have to sacrifice herself when it’s something we wanted to live together”, he laments.

The best place for a small baby?

A petition was published on the website change.org to denounce rules that are “unfair, against nature and contrary to the spirit of Olympism.” To date, it has received 170 signatures.

A discussion on the topic on the Reddit platform generated several comments and advice for new parents.

“Do your child a favor and find a caregiver, no child is going to have fun in a big room with thousands of people, lots of germs circulating and a deafening noise”, pointed out one of the forum participants.

Adrien Pol believes that parents should be free to choose, adding that basketball and beach volleyball sessions will not last more than three hours.

“It’s not a concert, if you are well equipped, the child can be there, at six weeks the only thing the baby asks for is to be safe in his parents’ arms”, he explains.