Paris 2024 Opening Oeremony Will Be Daring, Joyful, Organisers Say

By: Gyang Dakwo

The Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony next Friday will be a joyful, daring and atypical show in which artists and athletes together celebrate Paris, France and the Games alongside the river Seine, the ceremony’s organisers said.

Unlike for previous Olympics, the Paris 2024 opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium. Instead, dozens of boats will carry thousands of athletes and performers on a 6km route along the Seine.

“We know the importance of the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games. It’s key for the athletes, it’s key for the country which organizes it,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympics Organising Committee, told reporters.
“That’s why, from the start, we have been very ambitious because we really want this opening ceremony to embody all the ambition of Paris 2024: daring, atypical Games, which shows the best of France.”

Details including some of the artists taking part, who will last carry the torch and light the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of the Games, have been kept secret, and the ceremony’s artistic team said they had been rehearsing in private to keep it all under wraps.

But what is known is that there will be a floating parade, departing from Austerlitz bridge, sailing by Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral and arriving near the Eiffel Tower, with the show also using nearby monuments and mixing music, light and dance.

More than 300,000 spectators will be watching from the riverbanks, with hundreds of millions more expected to watch on TV or on social media.