The boats are docked, the cauldron is lit and the 2024 Olympic Games are officially underway. The opening ceremony was not held in a stadium for the first time in Olympic history as the Seine entertained 85 boats. Greece and France were the bookends of the floating parade.
Greece is always the first nation to start the “parade of nations” in the Olympic opening ceremony as an ode to the country that created the Games, with the first modern Olympics occurring in Athens in 1896. The host country closes out the procession. Advertisement Two-hundred-and-five delegations participated in the parade, though there are 206 official delegations because of those hailing from Russia and Belarus participating as individual neutral athletes.
(Both countries were banned from competing due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.) All the boats passed under 24 of the 37 bridges along the River Seine, according to the NBC broadcast. Some were large, some were small.
Some hauled hundreds of athletes while others held a handful. Either way, here were the most eye-catching cruisers of the opening ceremony. The Murano, a boat you can practically smell through the screen, is a Venetian motorboat built in 1964.
It is made entirely of varnished mahogany and is typical of the shipbuilding industry in Venice, where Murano — an island in the Venetian Lagoon — is located. The Murano carried Bhutan’s three-athlete delegation, and Kinzang Lhamo and Sangay Tenzin were the flagbearers. A fitting name for th.
