Paris, April 18, 2024, Socrates George Kazolias

French authorities are having second thoughts on their ambitious plan to hold the Olympic opening ceremony on the river Seine. “There are Plans B and C which we are preparing in parallel,” the French president, Emanuel Macron, said on April 15. Macron said he was working for an “Olympic truce” for Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan… and that he would “ask” Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to help achieve it.

From the beginning, those in charge of Olympic security have been hostile to the idea of an opening ceremony, originally planned with over 200 boats sailing six kilometers down the Seine while more than 600,000 people stand along the quays watching the athletes and the artists.

France has been under a constant terrorist state of emergency since 2015. “France foils on average a terrorist attack every two months,” France’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, said. “The terrorist threat in France is very high.” This is hardly reassuring with fewer than 100 days to go. 

But it was the March 22 attack in Moscow which killed more than 140 people and the Iranian missile attack on Israel which have alarmed the French president.

The Superlative Challenge

To deal with the security nightmare, organizers have reduced the number of those who will be able to watch the ceremony for free on the quays to 326,000. Another 200,000 are expected to watch from buildings and fan zones.

France is mobilizing 45,000 police, gendarmes, soldiers, and other state security agents for the event which specialists have described as “unbelievable and crazy” and “a criminal folly” as the professor of criminology, Alain Bauer, put it.

“If there is one place where your son will be safe,” President Macron told a concerned mother this month, “it is at the Opening Ceremony.”

The idea of holding the Olympic opening ceremony outside of a stadium for the first time was originally suggested by the President of the International Olympic Committee and former Fencing gold medalist, Thomas Bach, who imagined a parade down the iconic Champs Elysée. 

Not to be outsmarted, Thierry Reboul, the creative director of ceremonies, came up with the idea of a giant parade down the Seine with more than two hundred boats carrying some, 500 dancers, acrobats and 10,500 athletes.

Mums the word.

The exact plans of what hundreds of thousands of people in Paris and two billion around the world will see is Top Secret.

“There is so much noise around (the opening ceremony) that the best protection is to say nothing,” Reboul said. “In every rumor there are true things and false things, but in the end nobody can distinguish the true from the false.”

If the threat is too great to hold the river ceremony, the idea would be an outdoor, stationary, ceremony at Trocadero, just across the river from the Eiffel Tower or, the worst-case scenario, retreat to the Stade de France stadium.

But that may not be safe enough as the May 28, 2022 Champions League Final at the Stade de France proved when thousands of English and Spanish fans were attacked and robbed by delinquents from nearby council housing projects. Police were overwhelmed. The Interior Minister at first lied and blamed the fans for the riot. This should have been a wake-up call.

France is already under cyber-attack.

France has a lot riding on the Olympic games. Fifteen million extra visitors above normal are expected in the Paris region between July 26 when the Olympic Games open and September 8 when the Paralympics Games end. They are expected to spend 2.6 Billion euros, not including the tickets. Needless-to-say, except for the Seine bouquinistes, the French business community is very attached to the river opening ceremony idea.

Many foreign activists and state actors have already begun trying to frighten people away from coming to France for the Olympics using every argument from the terrorist threat, islamophobia, immigration to bed bugs, a person in the intelligence community who asked to remain anonymous told me recently.

Among those polluting the web with fake news or “instrumentalizing facts and blowing them out of proportion in order to hurt France are your usual suspects,” he said. “These state actors are using artificial intelligence, bots and troll farms on specific portals to amplify polarization.

“There are other state actors beyond Russia and China more surprising, like Azerbaijan which is angry that France is supporting Armenia. And Ukraine which is angry that France will receive Russian athletes during the games.”

 Of course, France has mobilized forces to fight the online threat to the games as well. As things stand, the opening ceremony will go ahead on the Seine as planned, France will showcase its beautiful capital to the world, businessmen and hotel owners will be rubbing their hands, and the world will see the most magnificent Olympic party ever held.

What could possibly go wrong?

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