Products You May Like
The giant opening ceremony extravaganza that Paris is planning to hold on the River Seine to launch next year’s Olympic Games could be moved if France is hit in the run-up by extremist attacks, French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Macron’s comments in a television interview Wednesday night were a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the deep layers of planning for the July 26 ceremony. Many details about the show remain shrouded in secrecy to preserve its hoped-for wow factor. The security, with tens of thousands of police and soldiers deployed, will be intense.
The athletes will be paraded through the heart of the French capital on boats on the Seine for the first Summer Games opening ceremony held outside of a usual stadium setting. Both banks of the river will be lined by hundreds of thousands of spectators.
“We are preparing an opening ceremony that is unique, which I hope will make the French very proud,” Macron told public broadcaster France 5. “It will be a moment of beauty, of real art, of celebrating sport and our values, with the Seine and the capital as the theater.”
But he said plans could be revisited for security reasons. He cited deadly extremist attacks that hit Paris in 2015 as an example of the type of severe crisis that could force a rethink.
“You’re 15 days from the Olympic Games. You have a series of terrorist attacks. What do you do? Well, you don’t organize [a ceremony] on the Seine,” he said. “Since we are professional, there are obviously Plan B’s, Plan C’s, et cetera.
“You have to be prepared for everything,” Macron added. “If there’s a surge of international or regional tensions, if there is a series of attacks … that’s a Plan B.”
Following Macron’s comments, Paris Olympic organizers on Thursday acknowledged there are “contingency plans” for the opening ceremony if needed.
“There is no single fallback plan, but rather a variety of adaptation measures — what we call in our jargon contingency plans — which are not intended to be public in any other way,” Paris 2024 said in a statement to Reuters. “We have contingency plans for all identified risk scenarios: heatwaves, cyber attacks, and the ceremony is no exception.”
Organizers also said Macron was using an “extreme scenario” in the case of an attack.
“Above all he reaffirmed his confidence in the collective ability of those involved to organise the ceremony as announced, emphasising that the event would take place with the highest standards of security and support,” the organizers said.
Prize-winning French theater director Thomas Jolly is overseeing the artistic content for the opening and closing ceremonies.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.