Paris Olympics 2024 officially open after glitzy opening ceremony: Highlights

Celine Dion sings on Eiffel Tower at end of Olympics opening ceremony as the cauldron is lit and rises up into the Paris sky in a hot-air balloon.

French three-time Olympic gold medallists Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner light the Olympic cauldron

French President Emmanuel Macron declared the 2024 Paris Olympic Games open on Friday during a rain-soaked ceremony in the French capital.

The Indian contingent was led by two flag-bearers — two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu and table tennis legend A Sharath Kamal — and was 84th on the call sheet. 

The women in the contingent were draped in sarees, while the men sported the traditional ‘kurta-payjama’ in the colours of the national flag.

A total of 78 Indian athletes and officials participated in the ceremony.

-PTI

Golden statues of historical Frenchwomen emerged from the waters of the River Seine during the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, a spectacular nod to the gender equality at the heart of the Paris Olympics.

Figures including writer Simone de Beauvoir and politician Simone Veil have been immortalised in gilded statues and will be maintained in Paris after the Games.

-AFP

The Nigeria women’s basketball team wasn’t allowed to board the delegation’s boat for the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, said a person familiar with the situation. 

Once the team made it to the area where it was supposed to board the boat for the ceremony, the group was denied entry by a Nigerian official who told the players and coaches there were too many people on board. The team then made its way to the athletes village after being turned away.

-AP

Crowds crammed along the River Seine and watching from balconies “oohed” and “ahhed” as Olympic teams began parading in boats along the waterway.

The stakes for France were immense. Dozens of heads of state and government were in town and the world was watching as Paris turned itself into a giant open-air theater.

Paris’ ceremony was unfurling along the River Seine, turning the city’s iconic monuments into stages for dancers, singers and other artists.

-AP

Thousands of spectators faced long queues and ticketing problems as they arrived for the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics along the River Seine on Friday.

Many gates opened an hour late and at least one opened two hours late because staff had not been delivered scanners enabling them to check tickets. When the gates finally opened at 5:30pm -– two hours before the start of the show -– heavy rain began to fall. Elsewhere, crowds built up close to the start point of the river parade around the Austerlitz bridge, with shouts of “At last!” when people were allowed through one hour later than expected. Other long queues were visible close to the Louvre in central Paris. The ceremony is a huge logistical challenge with around 100,000 people set to be seated on the lower banks and bridges over the river and another 200,000 with free tickets on the upper banks.

-AFP

Lady Gaga performed an iconic French cabaret classic at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The appearance of the U.S. pop star was kept under tight wraps by organisers, but rumours that she might perform spread after she was spotted in the French capital.

-AFP

The first boat emerged from under the Austerlitz bridge to kick off a spectacular parade along the River Seine for the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

As tradition dictates, the Greek delegation had the honour of leading out the flotilla, as the cradle of the modern Olympic movement.

The country has won 35 medals in total. Two siler medals were won in 1900 in athletics and in 2020, a silver and a bronze medal were won in wrestling. In 2012, a silver and bronze were won in shooting. India did not participate in the Olympics in 1904, 1908 and 1912

With Paris 2024 setting a new benchmark as the most gender-equal Games ever in terms of number, it is time to look back at the long road the modern Olympics has taken in its 128-year-old journey to reach this stage. 

When the Games was revived in 1896 at its spiritual home Athens, women’s participation was zero. It was during the first Paris Games in 1900 when 22 women (2.2 per cent out of the 997 participating athletes) were reluctantly allowed to compete for the first time. 

Paris again took the lead with a significant number of women participation (the number crossing 100 for the first time, with 125 women out of 3070 athletes) in 1924 and ultimately attained equality after a hundred years. -- Y.B. Sarangi

American rapper Snoop Dogg held the flame aloft as the Olympic torch relay neared the end of its 68-stage trek through France ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony. 

The flame was also borne by International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach and a string of beaming, waving, volunteer carriers. 

“The relay is over,” said an official preparing to drive away from the last stop on the Canal Saint Martin in a car carrying the slogan “flame relay”. 

“Next stop: the cauldron.” 

The heavily-guarded flame was headed into the centre of town ready for the final lap of its long journey, ending with the revelation of which star would run the final leg and light the cauldron to officially start the Games. 

The last day of the relay was entitled the “Epilogue”. 

The torch had passed through some smarter Paris addresses, on July 14, the Bastille Day national holiday, and July 15, before circling the suburbs. 

It started its final journey in Saint-Denis, home of the main Olympic Stadium and the Athletes’ Village, on Friday, before sailing down the still-industrial Canal Saint-Denis and under the motorway that surrounds Paris into the traditionally blue-collar 19th-arrondissement, braving occasional drizzle. 

At the Athletes’ Village, Bach and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took turns as torchbearers. 

“Now the real thing starts,” Bach told a crowd of athletes. “We’re all in sports. We know that what happened until now is just training. You can feel the vibe among the athletes and the organisers.” 

Yiech Pur Biel, who ran the 800m for the Refugee Olympic Team at Rio in 2016 and is an IOC committee member representing South Sudan, found the experience moving. 

“You want me to cry, or what?” he asked. “It is an honour to carry this torch for the first time.” 

“I am representing millions of refugees who are not here today, and also representing different athletes, different diversities and different communities, and that is what makes me so emotional to be here.” -- AFP

Most countries will have two athletes hoisting a large flag in the boats along the Seine River for the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on July 26, 2024. 

It’s considered an honor to be chosen for the duty at the Games, and for years there was just one flag bearer per nation. In a tradition that began at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, delegations now select one woman and one man to share the job during the curtain-raiser — although sometimes, if there’s only one athlete present, that person will tote the flag alone. 

That’s the case this time with six teams. Belize, for example, will have its flag carried by its lone competitor, 100-meter sprinter Shaun Gill. 

Here is a look at the flag bearers for some of the 205 teams scheduled to take part in the opening ceremony: 

India: Two-time Olympic medallist and badminton star P.V. Sindhu and table tennis player Sharath Kamal. 

Britain: Helen Glover, rowing (two-time gold medalist in the coxless pair) and Tom Daley, diving (Tokyo gold medalist in 10-meter synchronized diving and owner of three Olympic bronzes) 

Canada: Maude Charron, weightlifting (Tokyo gold medalist in the 64-kilogram category) and Andre de Grasse, athletics (Tokyo gold medalist at 200 meters) 

China: Ma Long, table tennis (five-time gold medalist) and Feng Yu, artistic swimming 

Eritrea: Biniam Girmay, cycling (first Black rider to win a Tour de France stage) and Christina Rach, swimming (16 years old) 

France: Melina Robert-Michon, athletics (discus), Florent Manaudou, swimming (London gold medalist in the 50-meter freestyle and three-time Olympic silver medalist) 

Greece: Antigoni Ntrismpioti, athletics (race walker) and Giannis Antetokounmpo, basketball (two-time NBA MVP, 2021 NBA champion with the Milwaukee Bucks) 

Puerto Rico: Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, athletics (Tokyo gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles) and Sebastian Rivera, wrestling 

Qatar: Shahd Ashraf, athletics (women’s 100 meters) and Mutaz Barshim, athletics (Tokyo co-gold medalist in the high jump with Gianmarco Tamberi, who is one of Italy’s flag bearers) 

Refugee Team: Yahya Al Ghotany, taekwondo (born in Syria) and Cindy Ngamba, boxing (born in Cameroon) 

Ukraine: Elina Svitolina, tennis (Tokyo bronze medalist in women’s singles and three-time Grand Slam semifinalist) and Mykhailo Romanchuk, swimmer (Tokyo silver medalist in the 1,500-meter freestyle and bronze medalist in the 800-meter freestyle) 

United States: Coco Gauff, tennis (U.S. Open singles champion, French Open champion doubles champion) and LeBron James, basketball (four-time NBA MVP, four-time NBA champion, career scoring leader). -- AP

Olympics fever built up in Paris on July 26 ahead of the evening’s opening ceremony, undampened by the threat of rain and heavy security. A flotilla of barges will carry thousands of athletes and artists along the Seine river in a nearly four-hour show starting around 7.30 p.m. (1730 GMT). Dancers will perform on the city’s rooftops, in what organisers said would be a “total show.” Hours after a sabotage attack on the high-speed TGV rail network caused travel chaos across France, crowds gathered along the banks of the river. 

“We are super excited, it happens once in a lifetime. We have no idea what to expect for the parade so it will be the total surprise,” 17-year-old Elise Boukorrass said after passing through security near the Pont de l’Alma bridge with her mother and niece.

“The security checks were a bit long but it’s worth it.”

American tourists Olivia Collins and her daughter Devin — a swimmer in high school - had travelled to Paris for their first Olympics.

“Yeah, we’re excited. Right?” Collins said. “We’ve been planning the trip for like two years.”

Some 45,000 police and thousands of soldiers have been deployed in a huge security operation in Paris for the opening show. Police imposed a security zone along the river, erecting metal barriers to fence off neighbourhoods and requiring authorisation - passes with QR codes - to enter.

“There are more cops than people, I don’t feel in danger,” said Jean Landerretche, a 19-year-old biochemistry student from Paris. He wasn’t too worried about the rain either, “as long as it’s not really bad storms.”

“I want the world to see how beautiful this city is,” said Landerretche, who said he was excited to attend the opening ceremony, the first to take place outside a stadium.

“I can’t wait to see how they managed to take the ceremony out of the stadium, I think it’s going to be a huge party,” said Julie Tourtet, 27, who is volunteering at the Games. “It’s really the Olympic spirit: it brings people together, it’s moving, we’re going to get a huge rush of emotion.”

But not everybody shared the excitement.

“We are here today and it’s just so so,” 26-year-old Aimee Wang, from China, said of the atmosphere in Paris.

She and a friend planned to watch a few of the sporting events but were not so excited about the opening ceremony.

“It’s so expensive today. We’re probably just going to watch in our friend’s house,” said her friend Henry Pan, also 26.

“But the train disruptions could prevent some people from coming in today and we might be able to find cheap tickets at the last minute.”

Others didn’t need tickets to watch the show live.

Alexandre Pichot, 48, didn’t realize when he moved into a houseboat on the Seine that they would have front row seats to the opening ceremony. “It’s really great. We have some good food, good French wine, good friends,” he said. “It’s perfect.” -- Reuters

BADMINTON *Men’s singles group match: Lakshya Sen vs Kevin Cordon (Guatemala) (7:10pm IST) *Men’s doubles group match: Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty vs Lucas Corvee and Ronan Labar (France) (8pm IST). *Women’s doubles group match: Ashwini Ponnappa and Tanisha Crasto vs Kim So Yeong and Kong Hee Yong (Korea) (11:50pm IST) 

BOXING *Women’s 54kg opening round bout: Preeti Pawar vs Thi Kim anh Vo (Vietnam) (12.05am of Jan 28). 

HOCKEY *Pool B match: India vs New Zealand (9 pm IST) 

ROWING *Men’s single sculls: Panwar Balraj (12:30pm IST) 

TABLE TENNIS *Men’s singles preliminary round: Harmeet Desai vs Zaid Abo Yaman of Jordan (7:15pm IST) 

TENNIS *Men’s doubles first round match: Rohan Bopnna and N Sriram Balaji vs Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Fabien Reboul (France) (3:30pm IST) 

SHOOTING *10m air rifle mixed team qualification: Sandeep Singh/Elavenil Valarivan, Arjun Babuta/Ramita Jindal (12:30pm IST). 

*10m air pistol men’s qualification: Arjun Singh Cheema and Sarabjot Singh (2pm IST). 

*10m air pistole women’s qualification: Manu Bhaker and Rhythm Sangwan (4pm IST).

World leaders began arriving at President Emmanuel Macron’s Elysee Palace office on July 26 afternoon, an AFP journalist saw, ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony in the evening. 

Mr. Macron and his wife Brigitte welcomed the guests on a red carpet in the courtyard of the Elysee, where they are holding a reception for around 85 heads of state or government before the ceremony on the River Seine from 7:30 pm (1730 GMT). -- AFP

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, supported by Belarus, in February 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended prohibiting Russian and Belarusian athletes from international events. In January 2023, the IOC announced that these athletes could compete as neutrals. 

The Russian Olympic Committee was suspended in October 2023 after absorbing Ukrainian regional sports organisations. Despite debates and concerns, particularly from Ukrainian athletes, the IOC Executive Board decided it would be unfair to punish athletes based solely on their nationality, allowing some to compete in Paris under strict conditions.

Breaking is set to make its Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Games. 

To attract new and younger audiences, Olympic chiefs have been emphasising the inclusion of urban sports. As part of this effort to stay relevant, breaking will join skateboarding, sport climbing on the Olympic schedule.

Estimated to have cost a whopping $1.5 billion, the cleanup of the Seine river that flows through Paris is among the costliest projects the city has undertaken as it gears to host Summer Olympics for the third time. 

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Wednesday jumped into the Seine in the city to prove that it is clean enough for open water swimming events at the 2024 Paris Olympics, scheduled to start on July 26. 

French soldiers and police are being deployed both in and along the River Seine to make it safe during the grandiose opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, when thousands of athletes will sail down the river at sunset toward the Eiffel Tower.

The unprecedented decision to use a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) stretch of the Seine as a spectacular stage for the July 26 ceremony in front of a 320,000-strong crowd has created a huge challenge for security services, who will need to ensure the safety of Olympians and spectators alike.

The 2024 Paris Olympics promises to be a grand spectacle featuring a diverse array of sports, showcasing the pinnacle of athletic talent from around the world. Here’s an in-depth look at the various sports that will be contested at this prestigious event.

The 2024 Paris Olympics will feature a total of 329 medal events across 32 diverse sports. 

Sure, they call it the City of Light. But Paris is also the City of Fashion, one of the most influential fashion capitals of the world for decades, no, centuries (remember Louis XIV?)

So it’s no surprise that fashion designers across the globe are busy getting their national team uniforms ready for their unique spotlight. When it comes to high-end Olympic fashion — be it for festive opening ceremonies, or for competition — all runways lead to Paris.

Stella Jean will be there, styling each of Haiti’s dozen or so athletes herself. Ms. Jean, an Italian-Haitian designer based in Rome, figures she has exactly two seconds, on opening ceremony night, to make an impression on the world — an impression that may reverberate for years. “For these athletes, it’s a victory just to be here,” says Ms. Jean, whose vivid, colourful design is intended to highlight the cultural vitality of the Caribbean nation.

The official mascot for the Paris Olympics and Paralympics 2024 are the Phryges, little figures modelled after the traditional Phrygian hats which are a symbol of the French Republic. 

The Olympic Phyrge is a blue, white and red cap-like figure with the golden Paris 2024 logo across its chest (blue, white and red are the colours of the French flag.) The design of the Paralympics 2024 mascot is largely the same— but features a prosthetic leg. 

While the Paris Olympics is set to be a festival of socialising and intermingling, city authorities are keen for visitors not to encounter any of the capital’s notorious furry inhabitants. 

Humourously portrayed in the hit animated film “Ratatouille”, the French capital’s abundant rat population is no joke for the city’s residents — and could be an embarrassment as the Olympics spotlight falls on Paris.

“All of the Olympic sites and celebration areas were analysed (for rats) before the Games,” deputy mayor Anne-Claire Boux, who has responsibility for public health, told AFP in an interview.

As well as ordering a deep clean to remove any food residues that might tempt the scurriers from their underground lairs, the mayor’s rodent specialists also worked to close up exit points from the sewers around the sites. 

“Where there were areas with lots of rats we put traps in place ahead of the Games,” Boux continued, adding that both mechanical rat-traps and chemical solutions were used to reduce troublesome populations. 

On the water, perched on rooftops and operating AI-augmented cameras, French security forces will lock down central Paris during the opening ceremony of the Olympics on July 26 aiming to prevent an incident that would ruin the biggest show on earth.

The figures tell only part of the story of the colossal effort made to protect the river parade along the Seine, the first time a Summer Olympics has started outside a stadium. 

About 45,000 police and paramilitary officers will be on duty, along with 10,000 soldiers and 20,000 private security guards. 

The total area that needs securing measures more than six kilometres (four miles) along the Seine and will contain around 300,000 ticketed spectators, as well as hundreds of thousands of other residents and tourists in overlooking buildings.

Singer-songwriter and actor Lady Gaga is set all to perform at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Earlier, fans had speculated that the ‘Shallow’ singer would take the stage on the River Seine in Paris alongside Celine Dion, Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande, and French singer Aya Nakamura. However, the ceremony’s lineup of performers has mostly been kept under wraps.

Paris has long been a city of dreamers: Just look at the Eiffel Tower, for decades the world’s loftiest structure. Audacity also underpins the French capital’s plans for its first Olympic Games in a century, which open on July 26 with an opening ceremony for the ages.

The most sprawling and elaborate Olympic opening ever — a gala spectacular on July 26 evening on the River Seine that even French President Emmanuel Macron says initially felt like “a crazy and not very serious idea” — kicks off 16 days of competition that promise to be ground-breaking, with nearly every corner of the city hosting some aspect of competition.

From making its first appearance here as a novel concept in 1924, the Olympic Games Village has come a long way to be an environmentally friendly legacy project for Paris 2024. 

If the first ever Games Village — a cluster of temporary wooden huts near the Colombes Stadium catered to the athletes with some basic facilities, including a post-office, a restaurant, a hairdresser, a newspaper kiosk, a laundry and a foreign exchange outlet — the latest one is promoted not only as a home away from home but also aims at benefitting the locals post the Games. 

Built on a former industrial wasteland bordering the communes of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine and L’île-Saint-Denis, the now-buzzing and heavily guarded Olympic Village will be transformed into a sustainable city district, with housing, offices and shops, where almost 12,000 people will live and work by 2025. 

The Olympic Games have not attracted writers in the manner individual Olympic sports have. That’s not surprising. You can be a fan of golf (John Updike) or tennis (David Foster Wallace) or wrestling (John Irving) or boxing (Joyce Carol Oates) or football (Eduardo Galeano) and write about these with passion and insight. The Olympic canvas, however, is too large and too varied for that kind of writing. There has to be a necessary pruning. 

Books on the Olympic Games can be divided into: history (including books on specific Games like the 1960, 1896 or 1972 editions); biographies and autobiographies; the dark side of the Games; a single event or a theme ( The Dirtiest Race in History, about the Johnson-Lewis 100m final); stories of overcoming the odds; the political and economic impact of the Games; and finally, fiction. 

Tilotama Ikareth is thrilled to be one among the athletes who carried the torch at the Olympic torch relay, ahead of the opening ceremony of the 2024 games in Paris today. Twenty-year-old Tilotama describes it as an “amazing experience”. 

“It is not just about carrying the torch for a few seconds; it is also about representing the spirit of the Olympic Games — determination, equality, courage and inspiration. The atmosphere of the whole event was ‘wow’!” she says, over the phone from France. She joined the rally at Gennevilliers, about nine kilometres from Paris. 

When we travel to a foreign country, one of the things we are keen to explore is the food it has to offer — armed with medicines to treat heartburn, just in case. But for Indian sportspersons in Paris for the Olympic Games 2024, familiarity is paramount.

The 33rd edition of the Olympic Games in Paris kicks off on on July 26 at 11 p.m. (IST). More than 110 participants are at the Olympic village as part of the Indian contingent. Along with them is a team of coaches, doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, and for the first time, a nutritionist as well.

As visitors and athletes Paris for the Summer Olympics 2024, open Wi-Fi networks with weak to no encryption pose a potential security risk. 

Out of the nearly 25,000 free Wi-Fi spots in Paris, nearly 25% of the networks were found to have serious security weaknesses, such as weak or nonexistent encryption, making them vulnerable to interception, decryption, or cracking attacks. 

Researchers at Kaspersky analysed 47,891 signal networks across popular locations and Olympic venues in Paris, identifying 24,766 unique Wi-Fi access points. 

Additionally, almost one-in-five of the networks were found to be using WPS configuration, which is considered outdated and can easily be compromised. The configuration could potentially allow attackers to compromise the security of connected devices to steal sensitive information including Personally Identifiable Information, and banking data.