Photo Credit: Associated Press
The Paris Olympics were getting off to a rougher than hoped-for start Friday, with suspected acts of sabotage targeting France’s flagship high-speed rail network and cloudy skies with light drizzle over the French capital ahead of its sprawling, ambitious opening ceremony.
On a day of utmost importance for France and its capital, with dozens of heads of state and government in town for the Olympic opening and a global audience of over 1 billion expected to tune in, authorities were scrambling to deal with widespread rail disruptions caused by what they described as coordinated overnight sabotage of high-speed train lines.
Overcast skies over Paris further dampened the mood. Together, service delays in Paris train stations and drizzly weather underscored potential vulnerabilities of the bold decisions to break with Olympic traditions and stage an opening ceremony like no other.
By turning the whole of central Paris into a giant open-air theater for the ceremony that starts at 7.30 p.m., Paris organizers have bigger crowds to transport and safeguard than would have been the case if they’d followed the example of previous Olympic host cities that opened in stadiums.
National weather service Meteo France forecast evening rains. Wet weather would make the ceremony more fatiguing experience for the thousands of Olympians on open barges and fans on the banks and bridges. The athletes will parade on boats along the River Seine before they embark on the next 16 days of competition.
The ceremony “was thought out so it can be held in the rain,” said the Paris Games’ chief organizer, Tony Estanguet, speaking to France Inter radio.
“It will perhaps be a bit different,” he added. “We’ll adapt.”
Still, Paris still has plenty of aces up its sleeve. The Eiffel Tower, its head still visible below the clouds, Notre Dame Cathedral — restored from the ashes of its 2019 fire — the Louvre Museum and other iconic monuments will star in the opening ceremony. Award-winning theater director Thomas Jolly, the show’s creative mind, has used the signature Paris cityscape of zinc-grey rooftops as the playground for his imagination.
