OLYMPIC GAMES OPEN TODAY FROM THE RIVER SEINE

NEWS

OLYMPIC GAMES OPEN TODAY FROM THE RIVER SEINE

Jul 26, 2024

It has been one hundred years since the Olympic Games were held in Paris for the last time, the first in the modern revival of Olympism in 1900. Having now, in this third opportunity as host city, the possibility of leaving a FEAR, in a refreshing presentation of the Games in this thirty-third edition, with games where there will be an equal number of male and female participants within the universe of ten thousand five hundred participating athletes, this being a point of high importance for the Olympic Movement along with the sustainability campaign.

The main peculiarity, refreshing and different from all the above, in the quest to integrate the Parisian population, will be the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which will present for the first time in the history of the Games, an unconventional opening ceremony, navigating a waterway belonging to a host city.

A large number of the 10,500 athletes will be aboard some 90 boats, sailing along six kilometers of the Seine River. This never-before-done event could mark a deference in what could be the Paris Games, a before and after in opening ceremonies. This will be a unique inauguration and very difficult to emulate.

This is undoubtedly a very ambitious ceremony, with one of its purposes in taking it out of the stadiums to reach more people, with a celebration along the Seine River and bring revelry and celebration to Parisians and visitors to the city of light.

It will be the first time in the modern Games that an inauguration will be held as part of a nautical parade on the Seine River.

This fleet will set sail from the Austerlitz Bridge, next to the Jardin des Plantes, to cross under eight of the ten bridges of the Seine, crossing the city center with a route from east to west that will end in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Trocadero, where the closing ceremony and shows such as the lighting of the Olympic cauldron will take place, on a six-kilometer route through the center of Paris, passing by emblematic sites of the Parisian city and some official venues of the Games, such as the Place de la Concorde, the Esplanade des Invalides and the Grand Palais, Notre-Dame Cathedral, then the Louvre, Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf, Pont Alezandre III and the Musée d’Orsay, all in front of a crowd of three hundred and twenty thousand spectators, including locals and visitors to the Olympic event.

26 juillet 2024 🇫🇷
July 26, 2024 ✨#PARIS2024 pic.twitter.com/djBE4YsWGi
— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) July 25, 2024

Around one hundred thousand spectators will be able to enjoy the river parade from the lower bank of the river, while an estimated two hundred and twenty thousand people will crowd the higher part of the river to watch the unusual ceremony.

This is the most unusual proposal for a major Olympic opening ceremony. During the Youth Olympic Games, Buenos Aires 2018, a non-traditional inauguration was held with a parade, where the delegations of the participating countries walked along 9 de Julio Avenue in downtown Buenos Aires.

_{^{Written by Salvador Almea}}

Categorias