French authorities have decided to reduce the number of spectators at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics

The French authorities have decided to greatly reduce the number of spectators who will be able to watch live the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, which starts in Paris on July 26. According to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, the total number of spectators will be 300 thousand people. This is half as much as was expected back in 2022, but in any case, the Paris opening of the Games will be the largest and most unusual in history: the organizers decided to abandon the traditional ceremony at the stadium and hold it in the form of a water parade along the Seine.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stated in an interview with France 2 TV channel that the country’s authorities have decided to greatly reduce the number of spectators who will be able to watch the opening ceremony of the 2024 Games live. In 2022, Minister Darmanen believed that a total of about 600 thousand people would visit it. Later, estimates were lowered to 400–500 thousand spectators, but, as it turned out, it was not possible to ensure the safety of such a number of people.

So now the French authorities, according to Mr. Darmanin, are targeting 300 thousand viewers.

At the same time, 100 thousand tickets will be sold for the best seats (more precisely, almost all of them have already been sold, and those that remain cost approximately €2.7 thousand), and another 200 thousand tickets for easier seats will be distributed free of charge . “I know that we have the best forces of order in the world, and I am confident that we will not only be able to win medals, but also play the role of hosts of the tournament without any problems,” the minister noted. I would really like to believe that in recent years the forces of law and order in France have learned to deal with crowds in order to avoid repeating the history of, say, the 2016 European Football Championship, during which English fans smashed Marseille, Russian fans smashed the English, and during the breaks everyone smashed the police. There is a more recent example – the riots that occurred due to the sluggishness of the Parisian authorities before and after the Champions League final (Real Madrid and Liverpool met) in 2022. Russian representation at this Olympics will be inconspicuous, but about half a million British are expected.

Be that as it may, even 300 thousand spectators at the opening ceremony of the Games is a colossal figure.

There has never been anything like this in the history of the Olympics and there could not have been, since there are simply no stadiums that could accommodate so many people. The fact is that the Parisian ceremony will not take place at the stadium. It was decided to replace the usual parade of teams in the arena with a water parade of the same teams along the Seine. They will follow the river on approximately 170 vessels, and the route will pass through such iconic places as Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, Place de la Concorde and, of course, the Eiffel Tower, in the area of ​​which the parade’s finishing point will be located. The ceremony itself will end in the Trocadero Gardens.

As for its details, the organizers traditionally keep them secret, but the director of the ceremony, Thomas Jolly, noted that it will be a very diverse show, the theme of which will be multiculturalism. “France is Edith Piaf, but France is also opera, rap, and all other styles. France is cheese, but also pretzel and couscous. The idea is not to project one identity,” Mr Jolly told AFP. At the same time, he noted the purely technical difficulties in organizing such an unusual event. To begin with, the director does not have the opportunity to conduct a dress rehearsal. Rehearsals for individual episodes take place somewhere in hangars, away from prying eyes, but only time will tell how many pieces will be brought together later. Plus, as Thomas Jolly noted, a bunch of problems are created by the fact that the bridges over the Seine are different (in height and withstand load), and the berths are different; plus, “the wind does not blow in the right direction,” “it may rain, the waves may interfere.” Mr Jolly said that organizers had backup plans in case adjustments had to be made due to factors beyond human control, but assured that in any case the heart of the opening ceremony would remain the Seine.

Alexander Petrov