PARIS: Security crews searched the banks of the Seine in advance of Friday’s opening ceremony, while senior IOC officials convened in the French capital as Paris Olympic preparations intensified on Saturday.
For the celebration, which will see between 6,000 and 7,000 competitors cruise on roughly a hundred barges and riverboats in front of 300,000 spectators, police with sniffer dogs patrolled the six-kilometer course down the Seine.
The French police will get support from their counterparts in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Qatar.
A ceremony practice was held on the river early on Saturday, but the public and media were kept out of sight by police and security barriers.
Since this is the first time a Summer Games opening ceremony would take place outside of a stadium, the stakes are very high for the aquatic parade.
Residents of central Paris have experienced significant disruptions due to the ceremony’s preparations. To cross the Seine, one needs a pass with a unique QR code.
“Over the past two weeks, we’ve had far fewer clients than normal. Many Parisians have left the city, and there aren’t many tourists around. In a Saint-Germain-des-Pres boutique, Behi Samadian,69, stated, “All of our local clientele has gone.”
Team delegations have begun to settle into the athletes’ village; but, the worldwide IT outage on Friday caused a delay in some arrivals.
“We experienced this worldwide Microsoft outage, just like many other organizations,” Tony Estanguet, the chief organizer of the Games, told reporters on Friday. “This morning, an issue affected all of our servers.”
But by Friday night, the accreditation systems were back up and running. Better news for the organizers: there was no impact on the ticketing systems.
8.7 million tickets have reportedly been sold, breaking the record set by the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Since several of the 45 sports still have tickets available, this number is expected to rise.
At the Diamond League meeting in London on Saturday, several of the athletes who are anticipated to be the biggest stars of the Games—such as American sprinter Noah Lyles—will compete one more time before the Olympics.
The IOC’s top brass, led by President Thomas Bach, will get together on Saturday to get ready for this week’s main IOC Session.
Behind closed doors, a dispute over the French government’s unwillingness to provide finance assurances could cause the 2030 Winter Olympics to be awarded to the French Alps—they are the only contenders.
With only 15 Russians and 16 Belarusians approved for the Paris Games, Russia will be conspicuously absent from the competition as most sports have turned their backs on Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine.
The Games’ competitors have to adhere to stringent neutrality requirements, but according to Global Rights Compliance, a human rights organization with headquarters in The Hague, two-thirds of the Russians chosen had either publicly endorsed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine or had ties to the armed forces.
The IOC stated on Friday that it would not comment on specific cases in a statement to AFP.
