Skip to main content

Innovative opening ceremony for Paris 2024 Olympic Games: 26 July


Rule-breaking, revolutionary, riveting, rainy, resilient – a river, a robotic rider, rings of steel, and a rare performance by Céline Dion. 

 

Right on time, the celebrations commenced at 7:30pm in the Paris rain on Friday 26 July 2024. It deterred no-one. Soccer star Zinedine Zidane – ZiZi – kicked off the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony with a short film as the French colours – blue, white, and red – went up in smoke. 

 

Along the River Seine, vessels of all sizes carried the Olympic athletes in a floating parade to the Trocadero and the site of the Eiffel Tower, resplendent in dancing lights and the Olympic rings. Greece, by tradition, led the parade of boats, followed by the Olympic Refugee team. 

 

For almost four hours of ceremonial singing and dancing, their songs and steps told the history of France. Lady Gaga – with pink pompoms and feather fans – sang in French to Zizi Jeanmarie’s Mon Truc en Plumes – My Feather Thing. The performance was soon following by a pink heart-shaped trail of smoke above the bridges of the Seine. 

 

Theatre director Thomas Jolly put on a spectacular rendition of the history of France, featuring blood red flurries spurting from a building lining the river – depicting the French Revolution. The rooftop Torchbearer wore a mask and was hooded in black and gold representing a range of French characters, such as the Man in the Iron Mask from the theatre production Phantom of the Opera. 

 

Most stunning was the woman draped in the Olympic flag riding a robotic steel horse propelled along the river. Arriving near the Eiffel Tower, the silver metallic horse morphed into a real white horse on the parade grounds. The Torchbearer passed on the flaming torch to waiting celebrities, the most notable was Charles Coste, the oldest living French Olympian – now 100 years old – who competed in the 1948 London Games, winning a gold medal in the team pursuit in cycling with Fernand Decanali, Pierre Adam, and Serge Blusson. 

 

After lighting the gold basin, the cauldron was lifted in a hot air balloon where the flame will not expire until the end of the Games on 11 August.

 

Canadian singer Céline Dion closed the ceremony, standing on the Eiffel Tower, singing in French Edith Piaf’s Hymne à l'amour – Hymn to Love.

 

And so, the first opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in history to be held outside a stadium came to an end, heralding a spectacularly successful beginning to the 33rd Olympiad of the modern era. Let the Games begin!


 








MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite  I  Rainy Day Healing  I  Martinasblogs  I  Publications  I  Facebook  I  Paris Website  I  Paris blogs  I  Animal Website  I  Flower Website I Global Gentlemanliness

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 


Martina Nicolls is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, and foreign aid audits and evaluations. She lives in Paris.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The acacia thorn trees of Kenya

There are nearly 800 species of acacia trees in the world, and most don’t have thorns. The famous "whistling thorn tree" and the Umbrella Thorn tree of Kenya are species of acacia that do have thorns, or spines. Giraffes and other herbivores normally eat thorny acacia foliage, but leave the whistling thorn alone. Usually spines are no deterrent to giraffes. Their long tongues are adapted to strip the leaves from the branches despite the thorns. The thorny acacia like dry and hot conditions. The thorns typically occur in pairs and are 5-8 centimetres (2-3 inches) long. Spines can be straight or curved depending on the species. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Suda...
1 comment
Read more

Hop on hop off bus tourism comes to Tbilisi, Georgia

City Sightseeing buses have arrived in Tbilisi. The iconic red double-decker buses, a feature of many cities around the world since the company was established in Seville, Spain in 1999, is now in six continents and almost 100 cities. The company established its Tbilisi business in November 2013, with its operations commencing in February 2014. The 90-minute tour stops at 11 major locations in Tbilisi (with 2 to 5 minute waiting times at each location): the Old City (where it commences), Freedom Square, Rose Revolution Square, Marjanishvili Square, the Dry Bridge, Konka, Avlabari, Metekhi, Akhundov Museum, the Sulfur Baths, and European Square. Passengers can hop off at any stop and see the sights, hopping back onto the next bus at any time. Alternatively, passengers can remain on the bus for the whole tour and take photographs when the bus stops at each location. There are one day (24-hour) passes (for 35 lari – about $20) and 48-hour passes for 55 lari, with family d...
2 comments
Read more

The Knight in the Panther Skin by Shota Rustaveli (2015 translation): book review

The Knight in the Panther Skin (12th century, this edition 2015) is a recent translation by American poet and author, Lyn Coffin. The author, Shota Rustaveli, is Georgia’s most loved poet. This poem is mammoth, a magnum opus – it is 1,656 verses long, separated by chapters. But readers, don’t give up, because every verse is worth reading. It is akin to 1001 Arabian Knights, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, or Shakespearean poetry. King Rostevan of Arabia has a daughter, Tinatin. She loves the knight Avtandil and he loves her. Verse 368 from Avtandil: ‘The doctor’s could do nothing. A dark twilight on my heart now pressed, I was on fire because of love, but nobody knew or guessed. They blamed my blood. The king decided bleeding my arm would be best; I let it be done to hide the suffering I had not confessed.’ But a knight in panther skin is seen weeping, and subsequently kills the king’s soldiers, sparing the king. Before Tinatin weds Avtandil she r...
Post a Comment
Read more