It took nearly five hours, but finally showbiz arrived at the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony when Celine Dion belted out the concluding number from halfway up the Eiffel Tower. What a moment that was. And fair play to those who hung around to watch and applaud her effort, soaked to the skin every one of them.
You might have noticed it was raining in Paris as the Games got under way. The artistic director, Thomas Jolly, had said earlier in the week he was hoping for an Instagram-friendly golden hour of sunset, or, for a touch of drama, a proper pyrotechnical storm. Instead he got a miserable downpour from steel-grey clouds, of a sort familiar to anyone who has ever holidayed in Rhyl. The point of the ceremony he had created was to showcase the host city, to advertise its glorious architecture. This was to be Paris’s moment in the sun. But the weather threatened to turn an idea that promised so much into the dampest of damp squibs.
And never mind the thrilling audacity of switching things from a stadium to a riverbank, never mind the technical complications required to make flames splutter up and around the city’s landmarks, never mind a featured collaboration between the opera singer Marina Viotti and death metal band Gojira (the Japanese name for Godzilla) booming out together, and never mind Dion’s glorious conclusion, what most will remember is that picture of the Emir of Qatar struggling to work out how to put on a poncho.
There were more than 350,000 people gathered along the banks of the Seine, determined to party. This was to be the most democratic opening ceremony ever, the doors flung wide to the biggest possible audience to witness it live. It was like the University Boat Race along the river, except instead of watching student rowers trundling by, the many thronging the banks were witness to some of the finest athletes in world sport looking as if they had just emerged fully clothed from the shower.
There were 80 big screens scattered along the riverbank on which people could watch what was going on elsewhere. Plus enjoy lots of films. This was less a live celebration, more a pre-recorded bash. What they first saw was a narrative about the carrier of the Olympic flame taking it to the Stade de France. There he met the great French World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane, who informed him he was in the wrong place and thus began a desperate dash across the city to get it to where it should be, with Zizou reprising the role David Beckham had played in London 2012, as keeper of the flame.
He then transferred the flame to a bunch of kids, who ended up being handed life jackets and put on a small boat by a mysterious figure in a mask: nobody could suggest there was no topical edge to this.
Then we were on to the live action on the Seine, where fireworks splattered across a bridge leaving a plume of French colours. There were fountains of water blooming. Smoke filled the air. Then, emerging from the gloaming, we saw the first boats. These contained the real stars of the show: the athletes. Some, like the low-tax mob from the Cayman Islands, had a glorious wooden launch that looked as if it had been borrowed from an exiled oligarch, all to themselves. Others were obliged to share their floating accommodation with participants from other countries. Afghanistan, South Africa, Albania, Algeria and Germany were all in the same boat, which may have confused watchers in Britain expecting the teams to be in alphabetical order. Until you remembered this was in France.
Then we were shown the first bit of entertainment. And it came from a real star. Lady Gaga, singing in French, appeared bouncing down some steps to the riverbank, enjoying herself behind some pompoms, paying bold homage to Parisian burlesque traditions. And given how little she was wearing, it was as well the rain abated for a moment during her performance. She was followed by a chorus line doing Moulin Rouge splits, some parkour recorded on the scaffolding above Notre Dame, not to forget a magnificent rendition of the Marseillaise from an opera singer perched atop the Musée d’Orsay. Plus interpretive dance. Lots of it. Including from a dancer dressed as Poseidon, who looked like a cross between Papa Smurf and Prince Harry.
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In between, we went back to shots of the athletes, most of whom were by now wearing ponchos. All along the 3½-mile course, the boats kept coming. The occupants waved enthusiastically, trying to look keen even as they feared they were contracting head colds that might well keep them out of competition. There was Tom Daley and Helen Glover waving the union flag at the front of the boat Great Britain shared with the teams from Guam, Grenada and Guatemala, Daley’s hair plastered to his forehead by the downpour. For a brief moment, watching her soaked compatriots from her hideaway in Gloucestershire, Charlotte Dujardin must have been glad she was not there.
Though things improved when darkness fell, and lights glittered from the buildings and bridges and the Eiffel Tower lit up like its sister structure in Blackpool, the trouble was there was no Mr Bean, no James Bond, no Queen parachuting from a helicopter. It is no mere jingoism to suggest London did all this better.
Sadly, until Dion’s intervention, what this ceremony will be largely remembered for is the world’s best athletes huddled under rain protection stuck on barges they could not get off. It was a sight reminiscent of the scenes of the Queen’s Jubilee celebration, with its pictures of royals shivering as their flotilla floated down the Thames on the greyest of London days. The difference here was that the head of state was not remotely inconvenienced. President Macron, together with other Olympic dignitaries, was in the one riverside stand that came equipped with a roof. The president high and dry while his people soaked: in truth, it was not the look he had hoped the ceremony would project.
2024-07-26T22:56:02Z dg43tfdfdgfd