'Crazy idea': How Paris secured its Olympics opening ceremony

PARIS — What seemed like a whole field army patrolled, scrutinized and locked down every doorway, window, rooftop, bridge, subway stop, manhole, backpack, handbag and water bottle. Helicopters and drones did not whirl overhead only because there was no place to whirl . The airspace was closed.

At every turn, police asked for a QR code and official ID as proof of identity. Then they asked for it again.

And again.

The Paris Olympics' opening ceremony Friday was only the first − albeit major − security hurdle organizers of the Games faced. The world's biggest sporting event has several weeks to run across an ancient and in places maze-like city, in a country where extremists' plots, terrorism and large-scale civil unrest are not uncommon.

But despite a soggy backdrop of rain and dull gray skies they appeared to clear it, and then some, as many of the world's best athletes excitedly floated down the Seine as part of an elaborate four-hour spectacle that saw a Summer Olympics opening ceremony take place outside a main athletics stadium for the first time.

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"An absolutely massive, massive deployment of security forces," is how Mathieu Zagrodzki, a security expert and criminal justice researcher at the University of Versailles, who watched the ceremony unfold from Paris' city hall, described it in a WhatsApp message. "Very well organized. Nothing really negative to say."

Tim Ayers, deputy director of major events coordination for the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, which is helping to protect American athletes in Paris, said that after four years of "intense preparation" the French executed their security plan for the opening ceremony without any major security hiccups.

"They blocked off the streets, deployed thousands of police and erected security barriers around some of the most famous cultural sites in the world," he said.

Yet it was a daring endeavor and even French President Emmanuel Macron at first thought it was “a crazy and not very serious idea" to hold the ceremony along the river, a very public and dynamic setting open to every kind of risk, threat and variable known to emergency planners, when it was first proposed. (Speaking this week, Macron said, confidently: "We decided it was the right moment to deliver this crazy idea.")

In the end, the "crazy idea" allowed more than 300,000 people to watch the opening ceremony from bridges and riverbanks as dancers, pop stars, tightrope walkers and others told stories in different ways about French culture and history; about global friendship and solidarity and everything in between. Céline Dion , diagnosed in 2022 with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes stiffness and muscle spasms, performed "L’Hymne à L’Amour" by Edith Piaf while perched on the Eiffel Tower in a silver gown.

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Footbridges were turned into catwalks. A metal horse galloped down the river, its rider wearing a cape emblazoned with the Olympic rings. An opera singer delivered a spine-tingling song from atop the dizzying heights of the Grand Palais. A 100-foot tall hot-air balloon, ringed by flames, lit the sky and capped the lavish affair that took place in and around some of Paris' most famous landmarks, though it did not obscure the scale of the security challenge.

"It's complicated," said one police officer as he gestured toward the huge security perimeter that was erected along both banks of the Seine to enable 85 boats carrying thousands of athletes from 205 delegations down the river. Watching closely, in and out of public sight, were frogmen, snipers and powerful AI-assisted cameras.

The officer reminded a reporter that there's another 2½ weeks to go.

Ahead of the ceremony, there were a few scares and some jitters.

French authorities had been on alert for potential acts of sabotage targeting the Games.

The country has no shortage of adversaries. They had warned there could be cyberattacks from Russia over France's backing for Ukraine in that war, or Iran. Possibly both. Israel's authorities had cautioned that its athletes and officials were targets . They often are, but this year perhaps more than most because of Israel's nearly 10-month-old war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas' murderous attacks and kidnappings there Oct. 7.

On Wednesday, a Russian man who has lived in France for more than a decade was arrested on suspicion of plotting with a foreign power to stage “large scale” acts of "destabilization” during the Olympics, which runs until Aug. 11.

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French police said this week that they foiled a planned attack in May near Marseille, in the south, apparently timed for the arrival of the Olympic flame in that city. The plot involved a possible incendiary device − a bomb.

For days there has been a steady drip of bomb alerts at Paris train stations.

Hardly 30 minutes goes by before fleets of police vans can be seen or heard racing down one street or another.

And early Friday, saboteurs vandalized several signal boxes and electricity pylons on France's high-speed train network . The incident , described by authorities as a "massive attack," took place far from Paris but it caused disruptions to hundreds of thousands of travelers on the day of the Olympics' showpiece.

Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, told reporters in a briefing on Saturday that the incidents on France's train network did not impact the opening ceremony. He further added that there wasn't a "single security" event "before, during or after" the ceremony that impacted its staging.

"Even the rain didn't stop us," he said.

But the train assaults did set something of a sour tone to the first part of the day for some as French media covered it non-stop and raised questions about what it might mean for the Seine event and beyond.

"I was really anxious leading up to it. I didn't want to take the subway, I wanted to try to walk here," said Katrina Palanca, a tourist from San Antonio, Texas, who was watching the ceremony from Pont du Carrousel, a bridge that spans the Seine, connecting the Quai des Tuileries near the Louvre museum and Quai Voltaire on Paris' Left Bank.

"But after going through that pat-down I feel really safe," she said.

Many of those observing the ceremony from Pont du Carrousel had on rain ponchos or were clasping umbrellas. Not Palanca or her husband, David Robbins. They were dressed in matching "Statue of Liberty" costumes.

The colossal copper-clad statue with its torch-bearing arm was donated by France to the U.S. in the 19th century. As a national symbol, for many it is an emblem of equality, democracy and those seeking new opportunities.

"There's a ton of cops out there," said Robbins, reflecting on Paris' security transformation.

"They're everywhere."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Crazy idea': How Paris secured its Olympics opening ceremony