The project seemed crazy, its realization perilous and its feasibility uncertain. It is reality today. Friday July 26, 2024, the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games will leave the stadium. A first in the history of the event. It will take place on a river, the Seine. Another first. It will be partly free, accessible to 600.000 spectators. Another first.
Less than 1.000 days before the event, the board of directors of the COJO Paris 2024 adopted the principle, the concept and the main points on Monday, December 13. It also validated the sharing of responsibilities between the different actors.
The result is already salivating. But the road has been long and tortuous for “ align » all parties involved. Security, in particular, has long made representatives of the Paris Police Prefecture cough. Thierry Reboul, the executive director of Brand, Events and Ceremonies of the organizing committee, recognizes this: around fifty meetings were necessary to get everyone to agree.
It all started at the beginning of 2019. Thierry Reboul's team worked on the idea of an opening ceremony outside the stadium, in the middle of the city. Very quickly, the Seine established itself as the best terrain for expression. “ For almost two years, until the end of 2020, we put ideas on paper, working on visuals“, says Thierry Reboul. Everything has been studied, analyzed and quantified. The river was mapped along its entire length in Paris, to ensure that the project was feasible.
The following ? A year 2021 devoted essentially to bringing together at a regular pace all the potential players in this Olympic challenge, until reaching an agreement this fall around the concept, its figures and its conditions. They were presented, Monday, December 13, to the board of directors of COJO Paris 2024. The project is no longer one. He made history.
The result today consists of around fifteen visuals, presented Monday to the board of directors. They leave a lot of room for the imagination. But the main points of the evening are now known:
- The athletes will parade on the Seine on more than 160 boats, from east to west, on a 6 km route between the Pont d'Austerlitz and the Pont d'Iéna. A 3 km boating zone is planned before the parade. At the end of the route, the same distance will allow them to disembark to reach the Trocadéro esplanade, where the protocol part will take place (speeches and oaths, parade of the flag, lighting of the flame, etc.). Big news: the parade of athletes will open the ceremony. Competitors will therefore be able to watch the entire spectacle, or even escape and reach the Olympic village early enough, in the event of an event the next day.
- Spectators will be able to watch the ceremony from the banks of the Seine. Two distinct zones are planned: the lower platforms, closest to the river, where paying ticket holders will be installed; the high platforms, one row above, accessible free of charge to as many people as possible. In total, the public should number 600.000 people, or 10 times the capacity of the Stade de France in opening ceremony configuration.
- The show will take place on a stroll, on the water, with the artists taking place on around ten barges to tell a story of France and Paris, mixing the past and modernity. But it will also be more fixed. The eight to ten bridges along the route will be used as “ balconies over the water » to unfold artistic sequences and sporting demonstrations. No fewer than 80 giant screens will be installed along the 6 km route. The platforms will be fully equipped with sound. The monuments of Paris will also be used to make history, like a sound and light show, with a projection of holograms on the buildings. Thierry Reboul explains it: “ We are going to think in several dimensions, with water, air, the roofs of Paris…”
- The opening ceremony is expected to last 3 hours, including an hour for the artistic and sporting spectacle. Despite its originality and its unique conditions, the parade of athletes will not impose any number limit. Delegations will be able to parade in their entirety.
