Organisers up the ante as Games opening nears

PARIS – Preparations for the Paris Olympics went up a gear on July 20, as security teams scoured the banks of the Seine river ahead of the opening ceremony on July 26 and top International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials met in the French capital.

Police with sniffer dogs were seen checking the 6km route along the Seine for the ceremony in which up to 7,000 athletes will sail on nearly a hundred barges and river boats watched by 300,000 spectators.

The stakes are high for the waterborne parade – the first time the opening ceremony of a Summer Games will take place outside a stadium.

French police will be bolstered by their counterparts from several countries, including Spain, Britain and Qatar.

Early in the day on July 20, a rehearsal for the ceremony was held on the river but security barriers and police screened it from the eyes of residents and media to keep the programme secret.

IOC spokesman Mark Adams said that although he had not seen the full plan for the opening ceremony, the show will “blow your socks off ”.

“I have a good idea, but not a full idea of what is in it. You can imagine it is going to be pretty amazing for the Olympic Games, first time outside the stadium,” he said at a news conference.

The preparations for the ceremony have, however, caused extensive disruption to residents of central Paris, who must have a pass with a special QR code to cross the Seine.

“We’ve had far fewer customers than usual for the last two weeks. There aren’t many tourists and lots of Parisians have left town. All our local clientele has gone,” said Behi Samadian, 69, in a boutique in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

But things should get better once the Games start.

Organisers say 8.8 million tickets have already been sold, beating the record from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics

and that figure will rise because tickets are still on sale for some of the 32 sports.

Meanwhile, the IOC’s top brass, led by president Thomas Bach, met to prepare for a larger gathering of all the movement’s members on July 23 and 24.

While proceedings are on track, not everything had been perfect in the years leading up to Paris.

Powerhouses Russia will be the big absentee from the 2024 Games, with just 15 Russians and 17 Belarusians accredited to compete as neutrals as most sports have turned their backs on them in response to Moscow ’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The IOC also said on July 20 it was resigned to the Paris Olympics being targeted by disinformation attacks following recent incidents blamed on Russia.

Adams said he believed a campaign against the Games was already under way.

“Clearly there is a campaign of some sort going on,” he said. “It’s not the first or last time that the IOC will be targeted with misinformation. It’s getting more and more sophisticated.”

He was responding to a question concerning a feature-length fake documentary that emerged in 2023 titled Olympics Has Fallen which used AI-generated audio to impersonate Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

The film, falsely purporting to be a Netflix documentary, was apparently designed by disinformation agents tied to the Russian government to erode global support for the Olympics.