The Paris Olympic Games have begun: after a parade on the Seine that was as unprecedented as it was crazy, they were opened on Friday, July 26, 2024, during a rainy ceremony that ended in apotheosis with a tearful Celine Dion on the Eiffel Tower. According to a police source, ” no major incidents ” was not to be deplored during this evening of which ” we’ll talk again in 100 years “, according to a message on X from Emmanuel Macron.
” I proclaim open the Games of Paris, celebrating the XXXIII Olympiad of modern times “, said Emmanuel Macron on the Trocadéro esplanade, alongside the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, and 85 heads of state and government.
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By bringing out the athletes’ parade and the stadium opening ceremony for the first time, the organizers wanted to break the codes, reinvent an exercise that could seem dusty, while respecting the Olympic ritual until the final lighting of the cauldron by two legends of French sport: the most important figure in its athletics, Marie-Josée Pérec, and the judo star Teddy Riner. The duo was preceded by a relay of around twenty Olympic and Paralympic athletes, current or retired, to carry the flame from the Place du Trocadéro to the Tuileries Gardens.
Director Thomas Jolly has built a show that immerses us in the City of Lights, which he has turned into a global scene. With an apotheosis finale when the Canadian Celine Dionwho has been away from the stage since 2020 due to a paralyzing illness, offered a powerful version of The Hymn to Love ofEdith Piaf from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.
For nearly four hours, in a mixture of recorded images and live performance along the Seine, Thomas Jolly summoned the history of France – sometimes violent as Marie-Antoinette came to remind us holding her bloody head –, its writers like Victor Hugo, its artists, Serge GainsbourgJacques Tati, Eugène Delacroix or Georges Bizet, its athletes like Zinédine Zidane.
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LGBT+ in the spotlight, twelve scenes brought to life by 2,000 artists
Thomas Jolly also intended to celebrate modernity, diversity, respect for difference and inclusiveness. LGBT+ people were highlighted, with the kiss of two men or a Last Supper played by drag queensthrough twelve scenes brought to life by 2,000 artists.
They were punctuated by the voices of the American Lady Gaga (who sang on delay according to a source close to the organization) and the Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura accompanied by the Republican Guard, by the notes of pianist Sofiane Pamart accompanying Juliette Armanet, or the brutal guitars of the French metal group Gojira. On the tempo of Supernaturea legendary piece by one of the godfathers of the French electro scene, Marc Cerrone, American dancer Shaheem Sanchez, who suffers from deafness, performed while the Eiffel Tower was adorned with a thousand lights.
Philippe Katerine, an extraterrestrial of French song, accustomed to eccentricities and provocations, did not go unnoticed, appearing as Dionysus, his body painted blue with gold glitter, to sing his piece Naked.
Female and feminist figures highlighted for the first gender-balanced Games in history
The ceremony also honoured women whose historical contribution has often been overlooked, with statues set to remain in the streets of Paris: the heroines of abortion rights Simone Veil and Gisèle Halimi, the guillotined revolutionary Olympe de Gouges, the exiled communard Louise Michel, and the pioneer of women’s sport Alice Milliat, so despised by the father of modern Olympism, Pierre de Coubertin.
According to the organizers, 6,800 athletes were expected. Those who came kept their enthusiasm in the rain, often protected by capes, enjoying a slow travelling six kilometers at the foot of the emblematic monuments of Paris: Notre-Dame and its spire restored after the fire of 2019, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Concorde, the Grand-Palais and then the Eiffel Tower. On these places, in these Games which pride themselves on being the first parity in history, some will try to win gold from Saturday: events such as archery, Beach volleyball or fencing, will be organized on these postcard sites.
For two weeks, until August 11, world sports legends Simone Biles, Sha’Carri Richardson, Eliud Kipchoge and Léon Marchand will make Olympic history in the city that has been waiting to host the Games since 1924, when Johnny Weissmuller was crowned king of swimming.
They will follow in the footsteps of the legends of sport and the Games honored on Friday such as Rafael Nadal, Nadia Comaneci, Serena Williams and Carl Lewis. This odyssey was made without the thirty Russians and Belarusians authorized to participate as individuals, under neutral banner, but deprived of parade due to the invasion of theUkraine.
Security challenge
Out of the ordinary, this artistic bet was also safe and logistics, prepared for four years. Never before have so many police forces been mobilized in France, with 45,000 police officers and gendarmes deployed, and 10,000 soldiers. For several days, the hypercenter of Paris had been sealed off, accessible only to those with their sesame, accreditation or QR Code.
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In addition to the rain, the French authorities had to deal with the organised sabotage of the railway network: in several regions, SNCF infrastructures were the target of damage, including arson. The perpetrators and sponsors of this attack are not known at the moment. But according to a police source, ” no major incidents ” was not to be deplored during this evening of which ” we’ll talk again in 100 years “, according to a message on X from Emmanuel Macron.
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