2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony: 4 winners and 6 losers

Prepared or not, the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games have begun.

As with all quadrennial, there might be tales of superb triumph, heartbreaking defeat, feel-good underdogs, and perhaps even a villain or two. However headed into Paris this yr, one of many principal storylines was whether or not or not town might correctly host the Video games — and whether or not Parisians even wished this within the first place.

This would be the first “regular” Olympics because the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, after the worldwide pandemic utterly altered Tokyo 2020 (a lot in order that these Video games have been really held in 2021) and the attendance-limited 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

There have been massive questions on what the 2024 Video games would appear to be. With among the occasions happening in main hubs of town — the seaside volleyball stadium overlooks the Eiffel Tower — will Paris be capable of deal with the crush of holiday makers coming to see the Video games? Are the safety restrictions going to make being within the metropolis a problem? Who’s going to carry out on the opening ceremonies? What’s everybody going to put on? Is the Seine River clear sufficient to swim in? Why is Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo so wanting to swim in it?

At the moment, we began to get a number of solutions.

For these first actually post-pandemic Video games, Thomas Jolly, the creative director of the Opening Ceremony, pursued a massively bold efficiency.

Not solely did he intermingle the parade of athletes with the present — usually two separate parts — however he additionally took each parts out of a stadium into town itself, alongside a 6-kilometer route alongside the Seine. As an alternative of marching on a stadium flooring, the athletes floated down the river on a wide range of boats because the digicam sometimes lower away to musical and dance performances, pretaped movies highlighting Parisian or French cultural touchstones, or the mysterious masked determine hurtling by town like a cat burglar and carrying Olympic torch over Parisian roofs and thru town’s spooky, watery underground. Over 3,000 musical artists, dancers, actors, and circus performers participated.

At instances, it was inspiring; at others, the tried grandeur was considerably misplaced. That wasn’t all that was happening in the present day, too.

From the Opening Ceremony of the Video games of the XXXIII Olympiad, listed here are 4 winners and 6 losers.

As an alternative of getting the festivities in a stadium, as is normal, French officers determined to have their graduation ceremony all through town, snaking down the Seine — and in case you hadn’t already heard about that alternative, the video intro starring French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane said as a lot. Weaving performances throughout the metropolis allowed for some spectacular visuals that spotlight Paris’s historical past and beautiful structure. You would see why this metropolis is among the best on the planet.

However the tradeoff was that it wasn’t at all times TV-friendly. Due to the way in which the stage was arrange and the place cameras have been positioned, Woman Gaga’s feather-filled cabaret on the Seine was lower off on the ankles, hobbling the complete impression of the choreography. And, in a sequence entitled “Liberty,” with decapitated Marie Antoinettes singing alongside flamethrowers, the large photographs didn’t convey the spectacle. As nation delegations floated down the Seine, it was tough to select particular person athletes — each for viewers and announcers doubtlessly curious about sharing details about their skills

While you maintain an occasion in a stadium, you possibly can anticipate sight strains and determine the best way to stage and block a present. Stadiums are constructed for efficiency and visuals! And Paris’s opening ceremony is the clearest instance of how onerous it’s to design a present with out these instruments.

—Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent

That stated, Woman Gaga nonetheless had a unbelievable efficiency.

One of many opening ceremony’s worst-kept surprises was Woman Gaga. Recognizing a grand piano positioned close to the river within the days beforehand, Little Monsters (the self-created identify for Gaga’s devoted followers) deduced that the celebrity could be performing. And that she did, conjuring up a French cabaret quantity on the banks of the Seine. Gaga carried out Renée Jeanmaire’s “Mon Truc en Plumes” (“My Factor With Feathers”) in full plumage, exhibiting that she’s nonetheless essentially the most theater-inclined pop star within the enterprise. In fact, Gaga will star in Joker: Folie à Deux later this yr, a musical-ish sequel to the notorious Batman villain’s origin story. And this efficiency will, little doubt, construct hype for Gaga’s flip in that film.

In her first efficiency since she was identified with stiff-person syndrome in 2022, Celine Dion ascended the Eiffel Tower and carried out Edith Piaf’s “Hymne a L’Amour.” To be trustworthy, though the legendary vocalist sounded unbelievable, it wouldn’t have mattered how properly Dion carried out — merely showing in public after the bodily and emotional toll she’s endured over the previous couple of years could be thought-about an accomplishment. That Dion delivered a fantastic triumph on one of many world’s largest phases was merely Celine.

As my colleague Josh Keating wrote earlier this week, the Paris Olympics face an unprecedented array of safety threats, from renewed worries about ISIS terrorism to the very actual hazard of Russian sabotage. Partly to maintain the athletes and the spectators secure, French officers have flooded Paris with police, and are even using a controversial synthetic intelligence system that may flag potential safety issues. It’s all meant to satisfy France’s promise that Paris through the Olympics might be “the most secure place on the planet.”

Thus far, not so nice. Early Friday morning France was hit by what seemed to be coordinated arson assaults concentrating on the nation’s high-speed rail strains. The consequence was quite a few canceled trains, disrupting journey plans of as much as one million individuals, together with spectators, Parisians fleeing town, and doubtlessly even some athletes. Fortuitously, the assaults, which nobody has but claimed duty for, induced no deaths or accidents, and the Opening Ceremonies themselves began on schedule. However it’s nonetheless an sick omen when one thing goes improper earlier than the Olympic flame is even lit.

—Bryan Walsh, editorial director

With 423 complete medals within the nation’s Summer season Olympic historical past — to not point out the 1,010 gained when it was a part of the Soviet Union — Russia has a strong declare as one of the vital profitable nations in Olympic historical past. However solely 15 athletes from Russia might be among the many greater than 10,000 Olympians in Paris. They gained’t be capable of compete beneath the Russian flag, and may any of them win a gold medal, they gained’t hear the Russian nationwide anthem on the medal podium.

That’s as a result of Russia has been banned from collaborating as a nationwide group due to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — a ban that got here on the heels of one other ban earlier due to a widespread doping scandal. (The identical goes for Russia’s shut ally Belarus.)

Partially because of this, Russia’s response to being excluded from the Paris Video games quantities to “properly, we wouldn’t wish to play in your foolish Olympics anyway.” The Video games gained’t be proven on Russian TV, and the media largely appears to be ignoring the Olympics.

It’s honest to really feel unhealthy for the tons of of Russian athletes who have been greater than adequate to make the Video games (and doubtlessly win medals), although on the very least Moscow might be compensating them. However hopefully bitter grapes would be the extent of Russia’s reactions. There are authentic fears that Moscow might determine to sabotage the Olympics not directly, both by cyberwarfare and even one thing in the actual world.

Headed into the Olympics, one of many largest questions was whether or not or not the Seine, Paris’s well-known and famously coffee-tinted river, could be secure to swim in. Town has spent $1.5 billion to scrub it and make it secure sufficient to host Olympic open-water swimming occasions. But, just like the litany of tragic man versus nature tales, all that cash and manpower could possibly be a wasted testomony to hubris.

Earlier this spring, French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Hidalgo promised to swim within the Seine themselves, a gambit to reveal how secure it was. In the end, solely Hidalgo adopted by.

And as talked about within the NBC broadcast, it’s been raining and storming in Paris and meaning sewage might movement into the Seine making it unsafe to swim in. Announcers stated it was contact and go, and officers might be monitoring micro organism ranges within the river earlier than anybody will get in.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation, solely gaining independence in 2011. It solely despatched its first group to the Olympics within the 2016 Video games in Rio de Janeiro, which included simply three athletes. It has but to win any medals.

However this yr South Sudan has despatched 14 Olympians to Paris, all however two of whom are on the lads’s basketball group. That group, which is named the Vivid Stars, has been writing a Cinderella story of its personal. With former NBA star Luol Deng as its driving drive, South Sudan made the Olympics as worldwide basketball’s prime group in Africa. And solely a last-minute layup from Workforce USA’s LeBron James stored the South Sudanese from pulling off an all-time basketball upset throughout a warmup sport final week.

Should you’re not rooting for these guys in Paris, you’re both really on one of many 11 different basketball groups competing for gold, or you don’t have any coronary heart. Shine on, you loopy Vivid Stars.

Since 2008, Ralph Lauren has designed the opening ceremony seems to be for Workforce USA and 2024 isn’t any completely different. This yr, Workforce USA are as soon as once more sporting blazers and pairing them with blue denims. Americana! Maybe it’s as a result of this yr’s outfits make the athletes resemble youngsters at a elaborate nation membership or that the uniforms look vaguely like this at each Olympics, however the design simply didn’t have the wow issue this yr — particularly once you examine the suits to the stunners coming from Haiti, Mongolia, and Taiwan.

Let me be clear — I’m an enormous fan of LeBron James, who’s the US group male flag bearer on the Opening Ceremonies. And the identical goes for tennis star Coco Gauff, presently the world’s No. 2 girls’s participant and the US group feminine flag bearer. And I can perceive Workforce USA’s need to place two of its largest stars entrance and middle within the march down the Seine.

However right here’s the factor about big-time professional sports activities stars within the Olympics. Their Olympics will not be these Olympics. James seemingly cares about getting another NBA championship ring, whereas Gauff might be already fascinated by her probabilities on the US Open in New York. The Olympics, for extremely paid professional stars, will not be the be-all and end-all of their athletic careers.

So why not put two athletes entrance and middle on the Opening Ceremonies for whom the Paris Video games actually would be the pinnacle of their sporting life? How about 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, who’s making her unprecedented sixth Olympic look for the (truthfully superior to the lads’s) girls’s basketball group?? And for the lads, how Noah Lyles, who’s aiming to sweep the person and relay short-distance sprinting occasions? I’m positive LeBron and Coco would have gotten over it.

A whole lot of 1000’s of athletes world wide competed desperately to be one of many 10,500 who made it to Paris. And from the sound of it, tons of of 1000’s of Parisians are competing simply as onerous to make sure they gained’t be in Paris.

Attitudes amongst Parisians towards the Paris Olympics have been profoundly combined. One survey from final yr discovered that almost half town was contemplating leaving through the Video games. To a point, not being in Paris throughout late July and August is a precondition of being a Parisian — as any vacationer who has come to the Metropolis of Mild in the summertime can attest, precise Parisians might be onerous to search out. However the Olympics have turbocharged the migration, with the variety of Paris flats listed on Airbnb growing by 85 p.c over the previous yr. Positive, they may miss a sporting second of transcendence, however I’d in all probability slightly be sunning myself on the Côte d’Azur too.