PARIS — Under the majestic shadow of the Eiffel Tower, amid the raindrops of a chilly Paris night, the 2024 Summer Olympics officially began Friday. An Opening Ceremony unlike anything the world has ever seen floated its way down the River Seine, with an explosion of color, of light, of dancing and singing taking place along the river’s banks, all of it designed to greet the thousands of international athletes who floated past them nation by nation, in their assigned boats. The years of planning, the months of rehearsal, the money, the manpower, the belief, all of it came together in the extraordinary effort to stage the first Opening Ceremony outside the traditional stadium setting, and the images that flashed across television sets certainly reflected the pageantry, joy, fun, and high camp silliness the French love so well.
Advertisement But even as the Olympic flag made its way across the bridge to be raised at the Trocadero, even as it was pulled to the skies as the Olympic anthem was sung by dozens of choirs, even as the night moved toward its stirring flame-lighting conclusion, it was covered in other, more serious shadows, too. From an early-morning coordinated attack on the city’s high-speed train lines, which included deliberate arson that French officials believe was done to disrupt travel ahead of Friday night’s ceremony, to the excess of 35,000 military and security personnel whose presence turned the city into a locked-down security zone, those television.
