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the opening ceremony of Paris 2024 will take place on the Seine

It will be a first in the history of the Summer Olympics. The board of directors of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (Cojo) in Paris in 2024 validated Monday, December 13 the principle of an unprecedented opening ceremony, outside a stadium, on the Seine.

More than 160 boats welcoming sportsmen and women from more than 200 delegations will parade on the river for nearly 6 kilometers between the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Pont d’Iéna, right in the center of Paris according to the plan. The end of the ceremony will be held on the Esplanade du Trocadéro.

The President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron formalized last July, on the sidelines of the Tokyo Olympics, this project which had raised reluctance on the side of the police, worried about being able to secure an event of such magnitude.

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“Today is a highlight. There are a lot of emotions, a lot of enthusiasm. The opening ceremony is necessarily the biggest scorer ”, said Tony Estanguet, boss of the Paris 2024 Games, during a press conference at the end of the Cojo board of directors.

Nearly fifty meetings to consider the project

The police would have liked to limit the public to 250,000 people while the organizers and the town hall of Paris were looking bigger, “Around 2 million people in the initial project”, had assured a source close to the town hall.

At the end of an interministerial committee devoted to the Paris Olympics a month ago in Seine-Saint-Denis, Prime Minister Jean Castex asked the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin to formulate « propositions » for event security “By the end of the year”. Nearly fifty meetings with all the authorities involved, from the Ministry of the Interior to the river institutions of the Seine through the town hall of Paris, were necessary to study the feasibility of the project likely to evolve.

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