Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony: Athletes will spend 45 minutes on boat, remain standing for nearly 5 hours and get muesli bars, crackers to eat

These are the estimates provided by the organisers so that the athletes are prepared for the big show that will take place a night before competition begins. As it turns out, this is among the few aspects of the ceremony that’s known with certainty. The rest is shrouded in mystery.

At the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony, the parade of nations course will follow a six-kilometre course of the Seine river, from east to west. (PHOTO: AP)

In the city centre, roughly half-an-hour away from the Village, two uniformed men with thick British accents guard a sanitised bridge and talk about a pair of big, mysterious eyes protruding from under a white sheet on the left bank of the River Seine. A prop for Friday evening — not a security threat.

Those living in the beaux quartiers — the beautiful central neighbourhoods near the river that house the French elite — peer over from their balconies to look at a piano lying idle on a black promontory.

The chatter early morning in the city centre is about the rumours of popular Canadian singer Celine Dion arriving in Paris on a private jet from her home in Las Vegas. Even French President Emmanuel Macron was asked about it. He did well to not reveal all but, with a twinkle in his eye, told France 2 television channel: “Apparently, she has arrived in Paris. I would be immensely happy if she could be at this opening ceremony.”

In greatest secrecy, Patrick Boucheron, a French historian, Fanny Herrero, the screenwriter of the hit French series Call My Agent, and Leila Slimani, the author of best-selling novel Lullaby, got together to write what’s hyped as a never-seen-before Olympics opening ceremony.

Slowly, the teasers of a ceremony steeped in confidentiality are emerging — be it the art installations on both banks that have changed the look of Paris’s landmarks, or the arrival of A-listers in their jets.

Paris Olympics 2024: The moon pictured with the Olympic rings at the Eiffel Tower,ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony. (Reuters)

The highly-anticipated opening ceremony has been the talking point ever since the Paris Games organisers announced that, for the first time, it won’t be held inside a stadium but along the River Seine. After years of planning, grappling with security threats and examining the tide timings, the moment is here.

The only Indian woman to win two Olympic medals, badminton star P V Sindhu, in her third Olympics, couldn’t help but wonder how it will all look. As India’s flag-bearer, she jokes that she may even practise holding the flag.

Another Indian athlete has a more mundane query: “Will our boat have toilets?” The athlete, requesting not to be named, has “overheard” conversations inside the Village that not all boats will have toilets. “Usually, we end up spending almost four hours at ceremonies like these. But it’s inside a stadium, so we have options. This time, it’s a mystery,” the athlete says.

94 boats, 7,000 athletes

The 94 boats and 7,000 athletes will sail past some of the iconic Parisian monuments like the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum, Place de la Concorde, Grand Palais, Les Invalides, the Musée d’Orsay, finishing at Pont d’lena at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

Nearly 80 giant screens will be set up on the quayside for about 300,000 spectators — half of the original projections but still the highest number of attendees in the history of the Olympics.

Olympics gold medallist Abhinav Bindra carries the Olympic flame in the Paris 2024 Torch Relay, in Paris, Wednesday, (PTI)

When the boat parade begins at Pont Austerlitz at 7.30 pm local time, 3,000 performers will simultaneously begin their acts on both sides of the river. These include Dion and Lady Gaga, BMX riders and skateboard champions who are expected to showcase their acrobatic tricks. And 12 tableaux that will showcase French and Parisian history.

These are some of the sketchy details that have emerged on the eve of the ceremony. They, however, have only added to the curiosity, leaving everyone wondering how these seemingly unrelated pictures will blend into a single coherent narrative.

Thomas Jolly, the creative director of the ceremony, handed over that responsibility to three people from equally unrelated backgrounds. Slimani was “deep in the Atlas Mountains” writing the third volume of her book when she got a call from Jolly to provide the opening ceremony “a language”. Boucheron, whose book on French history was on Jolly’s “bedside table”, provided an “eye for history”. And Herrero “brought her sense of script and image”.

The ceremony, Jolly said in another media interaction this week, has played out in his head multiple times since his team completed the script in June 2023. But to ensure it remains the Games’ closely guarded secret, they haven’t been able to hold a full-fledged rehearsal.

And so, everyone speculates. Be it laser tests carried out on the Eiffel Tower, covering the night sky in red and blue, the closed Parisian airspace, which they say may be to have a light show, or a strange balloon that covers the Jardin des Tuileries.

The Games are here. And the guessing Games have begun.