A corner of the veil was lifted on Thursday 30 March on the parade of delegations at the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games. But the details were not revealed by the organising committee. Invited to speak before the Ile-de-France regional council, the prefect of the region, Marc Guillaume, explained that 140 to 170 boats will be mobilised to transport the athletes along the Seine on Friday 26 July 2024. “It is a huge challenge to get 140 to 170 boats to leave from the east of Paris, near Ivry, and to get them to arrive from the Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadero,” he said. “When the Greek boat (the first country to parade, according to Olympic tradition) arrives at the Trocadero, the French boat that will leave last will probably not have left yet. It will be a logistical challenge to ensure that the 10,000 athletes will be able to get on all these boats in eastern Paris with the pontoons”. Marc Guillaume also spoke to the regional representatives about the need for private security agents for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, estimated at 25,000 by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. “We are going to call between now and September the 56,000 jobseekers who are in jobs close to private security or who have been unemployed for more than two years,” the prefect announced. With less than 500 days to go before the event, time is running out. At the end of February, only 3,000 new agents had been hired and 1,800 were in training.