Majority of French back Paris Olympic bid: poll

By Sports.Yahoo.com

A diver jumps into the River Seine with the Montparnasse tower in the background in Paris, France, June 23, 2017 as Paris transforms into a giant Olympic park to celebrate International Olympic Days with a variety of sporting events for the public across the city during two days as the city bids to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

PARIS (Reuters) – Some 73 percent of people in France support Paris’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics, a poll showed on Sunday.

Some 30 percent of those polled said they fully backed the idea while 43 percent said they were favorable toward it, while 26 percent opposed it, the poll said.

The Odoxa poll for RTL radio and online gaming group Winamax of 1,008 people was conducted on June 21-22.

Paris and U.S. rival Los Angeles are the only two cities bidding to stage the 2024 Olympics, and the French capital is running a series of events over the weekend to promote its bid.

On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron, in a show of support for the Paris bid, visited an outdoor tennis court set up on the Alexandre III bridge across the Seine and hit a few balls with the players. He even briefly sat in a wheelchair to play wheelchair tennis.

Macron also went to a floating boxing ring on the Seine river and exchanged a few friendly punches with a young boxer.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon. Editing by Jane Merriman)