Opening Ceremony | An unprecedented river parade to open the Games

(Paris) 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 during a rainy ceremony that ended in apotheosis with a tearful Celine Dion on the Eiffel Tower.

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“I declare open the Paris Games celebrating the XXXIII Olympiad of modern times,” declared Emmanuel Macron on the Trocadéro esplanade, alongside the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, and 85 heads of state and government, who stoically endured the deluge.

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.

Director Thomas Jolly has built a show that immerses us in the City of Lights, which he has turned into a global stage. With a grand finale when Quebecer Céline Dion, who has been away from the stage since 2020 due to a paralyzing illness, offered a powerful version of Edith Piaf’s “Hymn to Love” 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 holding her bloody head reminded us –, its writers like Victor Hugo, its artists, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Tati, Eugène Delacroix or Georges Bizet, its sportsmen like Zinédine Zidane.

LGBT+ Community in the Spotlight

But he also intended to celebrate modernity, diversity, respect for difference and inclusiveness.

The LGBT+ community was highlighted, with the kiss of two men or a Last Supper played by drag queens, in twelve scenes animated by 2000 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 the pianist Sofiane Pamart accompanying Juliette Armanet, and the brutal guitars of the French metal group Gojira.

Or the tempo of “Supernature”, a legendary piece by one of the godfathers of the French electro scene, Marc Cerrone, on which the 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 song “Nu”.

The ceremony also honored 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.

“The performances are amazing, I just wish it wasn’t raining,” said Said Pauline Brett, 69, who came from Chicago with her husband and daughter. “The show is fantastic. Just a little damp from the weather…” laughed Mike Smith, 57, a consultant.

Traveling on the Seine

Many did not have this composure. The upper sections of the banks, reserved for the 220,000 guests (for 100,000 paying guests), often appeared sparse. Many deserted before the end. As soon as the French boat, the last of the 85 boats carrying the 205 delegations, had passed, the spectators often threw in the towel, like Brahim, 19: “I’m going to try to get there in time to watch the end on TV.”

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 six-kilometer tracking shot at the foot of the emblematic monuments of Paris: Notre-Dame and its spire restored after the 2019 fire, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Concorde, the Grand-Palais and then the Eiffel Tower.

In the very places where, in these Games which boast of being the first gender-balanced in history, some will try to win gold from Saturday: events such as archery, beach volleyball and fencing will be organised on these picture-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 legends of sport and the Games honoured on Friday: Rafael Nadal, Nadia Comaneci, Serena Williams and Carl Lewis.

This odyssey took place without the thirty Russians and Belarusians authorized to participate individually, under a neutral banner, but deprived of parade due to the invasion of Ukraine.

Security challenge

This extraordinary artistic challenge was also a security and logistical one, 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 hypercentre of Paris has been closed off, accessible only to those with their sesame, accreditation or QR Code.

In addition to the rain, the French authorities had to deal with the organised sabotage of their 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 this time.

But according to a police source, “no major incident” was reported during this evening which “we will talk about again in 100 years”, according to a message on X from Emmanuel Macron.