2024 Olympic Games in Paris – The Sower and Boxing

La Semeuse — France's classical national figure — is depicted boxing. In the background the famous Pont Neuf as seen from the Île de la Cité, under whose arches the logo of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is inserted on the right, with the year "2023" on the right arch. Above and behind, the lines of an athletics track can be made out. The mint marks are positioned at the feet of La Semeuse on left and right; the monogram "RF" is placed below the bridge in the Seine.

Paris is considered one of the founding cities of the modern Olympic movement: the French capital already hosted the Games in 1900 and 1924 before staging the 2024 Summer Olympics for a third time — a record it shares only with London. Boxing, known internationally as "faustkampf" in German usage, has been part of the program since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and traces its history back thousands of years. In France the sport has deep roots: savate, the French style of kickboxing, shaped the national understanding of the sport, and French boxers repeatedly ranked among the world's best in the 20th century. The Pont Neuf, the oldest surviving bridge in Paris, has spanned the Seine at the tip of the Île de la Cité since 1607 and is a central architectural symbol of the city — shaping both the Parisian cityscape and its collective memory.

The Sower has been one of France's best-known allegorical figures since the late 19th century. She originates from a coin design by engraver Louis-Oscar Roty, first appearing on French centime coins in 1897, and has since stood for the Republic, its secular values, and the idea of building something new. Linking this national symbolic figure with Olympic boxing points to France's self-image as host nation: openness to the world and republican identity as two sides of the same aspiration. France issued this 2-euro commemorative coin in 2023 ahead of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, which took place from 26 July to 11 August 2024 and, with around ten million tickets sold, became the most attended Olympics in history.