PARIS — A senior Paris 2024 Olympics official on Tuesday left the door fractionally cracked open to moving the Games’ July 26 opening ceremony away from the River Seine.
“My job is to be worried, so I will be 99.99 percent sure that this is going to happen,” said Olympic organizing committee CEO Etienne Thobois, in response to a question from POLITICO during a visit to the Invalides venue in central Paris, where Olympic archery events will be contested.
Back in April, French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that Paris did have contingency plans for the opening ceremony due to the increased threat of Islamist terror attacks. France raised its terror alert warning to its highest level in March following the concert hall shootings in Moscow where Tajik militants killed almost 140 people.
There is concern that the current plan — to have athletes float down the Seine in boats — poses significantly greater security risks than hosting the ceremony inside a stadium.
“We have fallback scenarios, plan Bs and plan Cs,” Macron said, listing two options: A ceremony “limited” to the Trocadéro area, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, or transferring the event to France’s largest sporting venue, the Stade de France, which is located near the newly built Olympic Village.
In March, France scaled down the opening ceremony, with 104,000 spectators now expected to enjoy the celebration on the waterfront and 222,000 others watching from bridges and streets — dwindling from the 600,000 total floated by the French government back in 2022.
The opening ceremony is an iconic moment of any Olympics, and France is breaking with decades of tradition by hosting it with the city’s famous sites as a backdrop instead of in the main stadium.
“We’re getting ready, we’re so excited, it’s going to be something so special,” Thobois added about the Seine spectacle.
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