Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, director of antennas and programs at France Télévisions, recalled this on Tuesday June 11, during the presentation of the public audiovisual group’s system for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games: “July 26 2024, the whole world will be watching us. » The opening ceremony will be one of the key moments, followed by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
With less than 40 days to go before the event, new elements of the evening’s content are beginning to be made public. Starting with its format which, for the first time, will be completely revised. Thierry Reboul (executive director of the Paris 2024 ceremonies) and Thomas Jolly (artistic director) completely rethought the exercise and decided to interweave the three phases with artistic paintings, presentations from national delegations of athletes and official speeches from the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
89 boats on D-Day
We already knew that the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26 is not just out of the ordinary… It will also take place for the first time outside a stadium, on the Seine, which crosses Paris. On D-day, 89 boats will allow the 10,500 athletes from the 206 national committees to parade in front of the 326,000 lucky ticket holders for the occasion.
READ ALSO 2024 Olympics: the 14 French candidates to be flag bearersAfter a first rehearsal on Monday June 17, a second should take place a week later, on June 24, reports AFP. It will ensure once again that boats will be able to navigate without problem over the six kilometers which separate the Austerlitz and Jena bridges. They will travel at an average speed of 9 km/h. This dry ceremony is essential, because it will make it possible to organize the departure waves of the boats as best as possible on D-day. On July 26, they will be made up of around fifteen boats (speedboats, barges and riverboats) with, each time, one to five Olympic delegations on board.
The show will not only be on the water, but also on the banks and bridges of the Seine, where some 3,000 dancers will put on the show during the four ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, we learn. The world.
Tableaux and choreographies will follow one another, imagined by the director of the National Choreographic Center of Orléans, Maud Le Pladec, to music by Victor Le Masne. Four stages in total and ten to twelve sets on the banks will be presented to spectators and viewers around the world. It remains to be seen who will sing during the evening… Proof that there are still a few well-kept surprises for this opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
