PARIS — The 2024 Summer Games began Friday night, with a groundbreaking opening ceremony that sent athletes sailing down the Seine River so an entire city could welcome them.
Marking the first time in modern Olympic history that the parade of nations took place outside a stadium, an estimated 320,000 people lined the riverbanks to see the barges carrying the athletes float past. Even more watched from rooftops and apartment balconies, turning the city into the world’s biggest outdoor theater.
Striking a balance between breathtaking and bawdy, the ceremony broke rules, pushed boundaries and set a new standard for other host cities to follow. It also showcased the city’s resilience, holding the celebration amid heavy rains and just hours after suspected acts of sabotage targeting France’s high-speed rail lines.
It was a spectacular, if made-for-TV, start for these Games. And that was true even before Celine Dion appeared.
Draped in a Dior gown with 500 meters of fringe, a visibly moved Dion — who has not performed publicly in years amid a battle with stiff person syndrome — closed the show atop the Eiffel Tower. Her voice soared above the city as she sang “Hymne à l’amour.”
The three-hour ceremony celebrated all things French: fashion, food, art, dance and Louis Vuitton trunks. In a short video played on screens along the river, a few Minions — who were first animated by a French studio — popped up to pay homage to Jules Verne. Farther down the Seine, dancers kicked their way through the cancan and a heavy metal band performed with an opera singer while a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette stood in window holding her severed head.
There was even a ménage à trois (it’s a French term, after all) briefly shown on the stadium screens.
“We have been bold, doing things that have never been done before, like having this opening ceremony in the city, for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games,” Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet said. “Like every host country our ambition has been to help the Games grow stronger. And in the end, it is the Games that have helped us to grow.”
One of the most moving moments came when opera star Axelle Saint-Cirel sang the French national anthem atop the Grand-Palais as statues of the country’s greatest women rose on pedestals around her. Among those honored: world-class athlete Allison Milliat, who organized the first Women’s World Games in France after female athletes were mostly banned from the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Her inclusion was especially poignant as female athletes represent 49% of all competitors at these Games. Though it fell just short of the International Olympic Committee’s goal of full gender parity, it’s the closest any Games, Winter or Summer, has come.
IOC President Thomas Bach decided to declare it a total victory anyway.
“You are bringing our Olympic Agenda reforms to life by making these Games wide open,” Bach said in his opening remarks. “All of us will experience Olympic Games that are more inclusive, more urban, younger and more sustainable — the first Olympic Games with full gender parity on the field of play.”
After Bach’s speech a cascade of celebrity cameos began, starting with soccer legend Zinedine Zidane, who appeared in the Trocadero to pass the Olympic torch to tennis star Rafael Nadal. Nadal then ran out of the stadium — and, yes, this sounds like the opening line a of joke — hopped into a speedboat with Serena Williams, Carl Lewis and Nadia Comaneci and headed down the Seine.
The quartet eventually brought the torch to the river bank, where it was passed to a series of French athletes before it arrived at its final destination. French gold medalists Marie-José Pérec and Teddy Riner lit the Olympic cauldron — a hot-air-balloon-like object that will float above the city for the next two weeks.
The night’s biggest stars, however, were the more than 6,800 athletes who took part. About 350 American athletes — about 60% of the delegation took — participated, according to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Floating down the nearly 4-mile parade route, the athletes stood atop 86 barges, with the countries often sharing boats. Many wore clear rain ponchos over their uniforms to ward off the steady rain.
The ceremony’s nontraditional format had been a popular topic of conversation among athletes in recent days, with everyone from first-time Olympians to multiple medal winners talking about it.
Earlier this week, U.S. wrestler Kamal Bey, who grew up in Bellwood, Ill., told the CHicago Tribune that he didn’t know what to expect from his Olympic opening ceremony. He had been fitted for his Ralph Lauren uniform — jacket, tie, jeans — shortly after arriving in Paris and was ready to go.
“I hope they give me a lifejacket to put over my blazer because I do not know how to swim,” he said.
The ceremony’s success may give Paris organizers confidence as they try to clear remaining hurdles over the next fortnight. The most pressing issue continues to be safety, with the railway attacks underscoring the herculean task of keeping athletes, spectators and vulnerable infrastructure secure.
French officials raised the country’s national security alert system to its highest level after 144 people were killed in a concert hall bombing in Moscow earlier this year. While a potential terrorist attack remains the top safety issue, organizers also are monitoring potential disruptions caused by a confluence of protests involving labor issues, the pro-Palestinian movement and anti-Olympic sentiment in an already politically fractured country.
The IOC did not respond to requests for comment regarding the train attacks. Paris 2024 Olympic Committee canceled its pre-opening-ceremony news conference scheduled for Friday morning and did not respond to requests for comment.
Outgoing French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called the attacks “act of sabotage” and said they were carried out “in a planned and coordinated” manor.
“Our intelligence services and law enforcement are mobilized to find and punish the perpetrators of these criminal acts,” he said in a post on X.
In addition to security concerns, questions also remain as to whether the Seine will be clean enough for triathletes and marathon swimmers to bathe in, given that the water’s E. coli levels frequently surpass the safety standards in Europe and the United States. Friday’s relentless rains also will likely cause the E. coli levels to rise, possibly causing difficulties for the triathlon and marathon swimming events.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo swam in the water earlier this month to bolster confidence in its cleanliness. President Emmanuel Macron did not make good on his promise to join her.
And Paris 2024 CEO Etienne Thobois has predicted the river will be the Games’ most enduring legacy.
“I’m pretty sure that when we have 25 areas where people will be able to swim after the Games, the reference to the Paris 2024 Games will stay for a long time,” Thobois said earlier this week. “That will be a symbol.”
©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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