Macron: Security Crisis Could Change 2024 Opening Ceremony Plans

As the calendar is about to turn and the countdown gets ever closer for the 2024 Olympic Summer Games, French President Emmanuel Macron said the giant Opening Ceremony extravaganza which Paris is planning to hold on the River Seine to launch the Games could be moved if France is hit in the run-up by extremist attacks.

In the security protocol reported in May, thousands of spectators who will watch the open-air gala along a 3 1/2-mile route will need to pre-register for tickets. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, in charge of security, had been pushing for a shift so non-paying spectators can be allocated spots on the river’s upper embankments, separated from 100,000 others paying for a closer, waterside view. Athletes will be paraded from east to west along the river aboard 91 boats, with 25 other craft in reserve for breakdowns or other needs and about 30 boats for security. The whole event, including the parade to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, an artistic and musical show and the official ceremony with the lighting of the Olympic flame is expected to last about 3 1/2 hours.

“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,” Macron told public broadcaster France 5. “Since we are professional, there are obviously plan Bs, plan Cs, et cetera. You have to be prepared for everything. If there’s a surge of international or regional tensions, if there is a series of attacks … that’s a plan B.”

Macron’s comments in a television interview on Wednesday night were a glimpse into the layers of planning for the July 26 event. 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.

“We are preparing an opening ceremony that is unique, which I hope will make the French very proud,” Macron told 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.

Speaking at an end-of-year news conference on Wednesday before Macron’s subsequent TV interview, chief Paris Games organizer Tony Estanguet said the Seine ceremony is “the only project that we are working on.”

The Olympic Summer Games run from July 26 through August 11, 2024. The Paralympic Games take place from August 28 through September 8. The torch will be lit by the sun’s rays on April 16 in Ancient Olympia, Greece and then be carried around the nation before its handover in Athens, leaving April 27 aboard a three-mast ship for the French port of Marseille.