PARIS—France’s audacious plan to open the Paris Olympic Games on the Seine raised plenty of eyebrows before Friday night’s ceremony.
Detractors worried about security, about crowd management, about the logistics of moving 85 boats carrying 6,800 athletes down the Seine. Coordinated arson attacks on France’s high-speed rail network Thursday night further raised anxieties about unwelcome disruptions.
But in the end, Paris transformed itself into a spectacular stage – and demonstrated that bold thinking could bring a certain shine back to a global sporting event that has seen its popularity slump in recent years.
A century after the 1924 Paris Olympics, the opening ceremonyFriday represented a return to the host’s seat for France. And after two pandemic Olympics, muted and virtually spectator-less, they marked a triumphant revival of the spectacle of the Games: colorful, convivial, flashy and weird – a dynamic blend of ardent patriotism and glitzy internationalism.
No site more iconic and special
When France bid to host this Olympics in 2016, it envisioned a traditional ceremony in the Stade de France. But in the years that followed, organizers began brainstorming creative ways to weave the Games throughout the city – and for the opening ceremony, there was no site more iconic and special than the Seine.
Thomas Jolly, the ceremonies’ artistic director, wrote that his vision aimed to showcase the Parisian river’s “power to grant wishes and its power to heal” at a time of global conflict and after local tragedy, including the 2019 fire that severely damaged Notre Dame Cathedral. The famous church, a symbol of France to many, featured prominently at the start of the ceremony, when performers hung from scaffolding and rang the bells for the first time since the fire.
“Paris is back on its feet, jubilant, flamboyant, creative and open. Free,” Jolly wrote.
For more than four hours Friday night, it was all of that.
Eschewing the timeworn choreography of a show followed by an athletes’ parade, Paris interspersed performances with the delegations’ river procession. The program progressed through 12 “artistic tableaux,” with themes such as “liberty,” “sisterhood” and “darkness,” each showcasing aspects of French history, culture and craftsmanship. Moulin Rouge dancers and the Mona Lisa made an appearance – as did acrobats, fashion models and a scene from “Les Misérables.”
It was a star-studded event: Lady Gaga, wearing pink feathers, sang the cabaret classic “Mon Truc en Plumes.” The metal band Gojira and pop star Aya Nakamura brought French flavor. Céline Dion closed out the ceremony with a stirring rendition of “Hymn to Love” after an epic Eiffel Tower light show.
Divergence from the norm
The decision to hold the opening ceremony on the river represented a bold – and risky – divergence from the norm.
“Hubris is the word which can come to mind,” political analyst François Heisbourg said. “It’s a big organizational challenge, a big security challenge and big reputational challenge if you don’t play it safe. The French decided not to play it safe.”
Friday got off to an ignominious start. The arson attacks caused severe disruptions to travel just hours before the opening ceremony were slated to begin. Gabriel Attal, the French caretaker prime minister, said Friday that “acts of sabotage” were carried out in a “prepared and coordinated manner,” hitting lines running east, west and north of Paris. But local transport in the Paris region wasn’t affected. (It still isn’t clear who was behind the attack; the public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.)
Literal rain clouds also gathered overhead, leaving questions throughout the day about whether the outdoor ceremony would lose its promised luster.
At the Trocadero esplanade Friday night, spectators sheltered from the downpour under ponchos and umbrellas. Technical staff spoke frantically into their intercoms when two of the six big screens – including one that French President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders were watching – briefly went black.
Some journalists left early to search for drier filing spaces. But many spectators, some of whom had paid thousands of dollars for the coveted Trocadero seats, remained undeterred and enthusiastic.
There was no dramatic sunset over the Seine. But the performances – spanning riverbanks, bridges, watercraft and rooftops – went off without a hitch.
Much could have gone wrong
Much could have gone wrong with an open-air, miles-long boat procession. Paris has been a frequent target of terrorism; attacks by Islamist extremists in November 2015 killed 130 people and wounded more than 400 others. Israel’s war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stoked geopolitical tensions. The 1972 Munich Olympics, in which Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, loomed large as a worst-case scenario.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Friday that more than 50,000 security officers had been deployed for the opening ceremony, including French police and soldiers, private contractors and foreign security personnel lent from about 50 countries. Israeli athletes, some of whom received threats in the lead-up to the Olympics, were under extra protection.
An AI-powered surveillance center was also engaged to detect sudden crowd movements, abandoned objects or people lying on the ground – an endeavor designed to thwart an attack like the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
French authorities were clearly on edge, evacuating multiple sites around Paris throughout the day Friday due to bomb scares.
Drones represented another possible threat. French authorities closed the airspace within around 100 miles of Paris at 6:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. Eastern time), a “historic” move that shut down air traffic from Paris-area airports until midnight local time. The French military coordinated anti-drone operations from a base southwest of Paris, deploying dozens of teams with anti-drone equipment.
System of barricades
To secure the parade route, authorities took the dramatic step of locking down the Seine with a system of barricades that cut off access to the river for many locals. Workers began installing the chain-link fences and closing off bridges along the river last Thursday, eight days before the ceremony. Joggers taking early morning runs on the riverbanks had to scramble back through checkpoints. Bicyclists saw their routes suddenly cut off. Traffic near the river backed up, and roads became impassable.
France did everything right from a security perspective, Heisbourg said. But the fortresslike perimeter around the Seine flew in the face of Paris’s “Games Wide Open” pledge to make the Olympics accessible, and particularly for Parisians, he added.
Many Parisians with the means headed out of town before the opening ceremony began, an exodus that was complicated by the arson attacks on train lines. But others stayed to take in the show in their hometown.
At Parc Clichy Batignolles Martin Luther King, a small plot of grass in northern Paris, the epic opening ceremony became a community festival. Fans sat in folding chairs and on blankets in front of a stage and a large screen. Families played cards around picnic tables. A man waved a Chilean flag. One woman had Norway’s colors painted on her face. The rain did not dampen the spirits of a group sporting Swiss-flag bucket hats, who began dancing and singing along to “It’s Raining Men.”
Jeffrey Juilly, 45, and Nadia Got, 39, were among the Parisians standing in line at a beer tent at the park. Juilly acknowledged that city residents were divided on the benefits of the Olympics.
“A lot of people complained,” Got said. But they counted themselves among the excited half the city, taking pride in the audacity of using the Seine.
What did they hope the opening ceremony would show the world? “The wonder of Paris,” Juilly said.
In addition to making better use of existing infrastructure than previous host cities had, Paris 2024 organizers pledged to ensure the Games would benefit residents of marginalized neighborhoods in the region.
At a watch party in Saint-Denis, the low-income French suburb where the Stade de France – a major Olympic venue – is located, residents cheered when Lady Gaga appeared on screen. At a cafe down the street, Mounia Seddiki, 23, was trying to get into the Olympic spirit. She bemoaned the heavy traffic the opening ceremony had caused, and how complicated she’d found it to buy tickets to the competitions. But as officials have invested more in Saint-Denis to prepare for the Olympics, the streets have become safer, she said.
Some eight miles away, as the parade of Olympic delegations continued down the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower, athletes on board the boats looked progressively wetter. By the time Team USA came into view, the rain had soaked through the athletes’ hair and Ralph Lauren blazers. But they still smiled wide and snapped selfies as night descended over the river.
Notably absent from the boats: teams from Russia and Belarus. The International Olympic Committee imposed sanctions in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Russian Olympic federation was suspended for trying to claim athletes in seized Ukrainian territories as their own. Some Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed in the Paris Games, but only as what the IOC calls “independent neutral athletes.” They weren’t allowed to join the opening ceremony.
Despite the IOC’s official commitment to neutrality, the Olympics are always political – and these Games, particularly so, with calls for Israeli athletes to be excluded in light of Israel’s destructive war in Gaza.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, framed by the arch of the Eiffel Tower, and shielded by an umbrella, Tony Estanguet, a former French canoeist and the head of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, offered a message of unity to the athletes gathered before him.
“Even though the Games cannot solve every problem, even though discrimination and conflicts are not about to disappear, tonight you have reminded us how beautiful humanity is when we come together,” he said. “And when you return to the Olympic Village, you will be sending a message of hope to the whole world: That there is a place where people of every nationality, every culture and every religion can live together. You’ll be reminding us of what’s possible.”
