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Field Hockey at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Stade Yves-du-Manoir

Florian Buechting Sports Reviews No Comments

Stade Yves-du-Manoir Paris 2024 Field Hockey

Stade Yves-du-Manoir Paris 2024 Field Hockey
4.5

Rating

 4.5/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Nice scenery
  • Good directions from the station (with some nice services)
  • Nice area to hang out between matches
  • Effective transport / transit from Central Paris

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Stands not cleaned
  • Rather remote in Greater Paris

This week is dominated by reviews of experiences I had during my visit at the first weekend of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. After I took you to one very special visit, the Men’s Rugby Sevens Finals at Stade de France, my in fact last visit (but second last post about that weekend on Flyctory.com) is another special one. For the field hockey tournament, the organizers renovated the Stade Yves-du-Manoir, which has been the Olympic Stadium for the previous games in Paris in 1924. On the morning on 30th July, I watched the women’s group matches of Belgium vs. China and Australia vs. South Africa. Here is my review.

 

Stade Yves-du-Manoir – Location & Admission

The stadium is located in Colombes, a suburb of Paris, some 10 km Northwest of Paris. The area around the stadium is rather residential. From the train station, you pass a couple of supermarkets and bakeries, which help you to stock up your food reserves before the matches.

As already stated, the straight-forward way to get to the stadium is getting the train to the Le Stade (what a suitable name) station. The stadium is a some ten to fifteen minutes walk away from the stadium. You reach it by the J local train line from Gare Saint-Lazare, which by the comes with the nice and modern SNCF Class Z 50000 trains. The organisation of the route to and from the station was well signed and organized, including waiting lines at the station for the end of the session. Riding time from the Paris city station is some 15 minutes, Trains run very frequently.

 

Stade Yves-du-Manoir – The Stadium

In fact, the Olympics featured two hockey fields on the same site. However, there were separate tickets for each stadium with slightly staggered session times, so that the lines getting into the stadium worked out rather well. Security was relaxed and reasonable, in significant contrast to the German Fan Zone I introduced you to already. I have been on the main arena, which also features one renovated stand of the original Olympic stadium. The other stands around the artificial turf courts were mobile steel constructions. A nice feature of this stadium is that there is a picture gallery telling you some facts about the history of the stadium right along the way from the station to the venue.

Despite the stands were mobile ones, the scenery was really nice. The weather was quite hot, so that it was a bit of a shame that three of the four stands do not have any kind of shadow. Additionally, one of the video screens was quite massively exposed to the sun so that you could hardly see anything on it. We had the first session of Sunday, 28th July 2024. There was rain the day before. Nonetheless, I was quite disappointed that obviously neither the seats nor the stand itself have been cleaned overnight. You likely cannot avoid the mud underneath the construction while getting into the stadium, though. Despite the seats look rather cheap, I even preferred them over the business seats in Stade de France.

 

Stade Yves-du-Manoir – Atmosphere

The atmosphere was very friendly and relaxed. Overall, field hockey felt to attract much more people from foreign countries (like Dutch, German or Belgian people) than French visitors. I was quite surprised about the lack of knowledge of the video people though. When one shot from far outside the circle went straight into the goal, it took them some ten second to finally stop the goal jingle (even though the goalie obviously let the ball through). In contrast to other venues, though, the English-speaking host was much more present, which I appreciated. Unfortunately, like in all Paris 2024 venues I visited, volunteers and security regularly spoke French to you when you asked something in English. I feel that is absolutely not appropriate for an event like that.

 

Stade Yves-du-Manoir – Food & Merch

The services and offers around the venue were likely the best I explored during my whole visit. There were multiple booths for food and drinks. They even sold items like waffles, which I hadn’t seen in other places before. As in all Olympic venues, only cash or VISA card payment is accepted. Except from some smaller booths selling Paris 2024 merchandise, there was also a not that little store container, which finally sold much more items than we for example explored when we visited the one at Le Halles in the center of Paris.

 

Stade Yves-du-Manoir – Services

The key reason why I liked the Stade Yves-du-Manoir most on my trip was the atmosphere and services around. Unfortunately, there were rather long lines at any service, including the free water bottle refilling, but the organizers had set up some nice areas where you could hang out and enjoy yourself between or during the matches. This gave a lot of the Olympic atmosphere I loved during my visit to the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. There was also a small area where you could try out playing some field hockey challenges – but of course, I just cannot do that kind of thing.

 

Field Hockey at Stade Yves-du-Manoir – My View

Not only that the tickets were really cheap (some 40 Euro for two matches), I really loved Stade Yves-du-Manoir the most on my trip. The first match I saw was definitely absolutely terrible to watch (the second one was really nice, though), but the setting in the venue and on the way to the station was absolutely nice. Bad luck that you finally don’t see too much of the historic Olympic structures. Definitely bring a water bottle, a hat and sunblocker with you, when you watch field hockey at paris 2024 or visit an event there in summer thereafter. Finally, this was the only Paris 2024 venue I visited which clearly deserves the Top Pick! rating.

 

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