Prepared or not, the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games have begun.

As with all quadrennial, there might be tales of superb triumph, heartbreaking defeat, feel-good underdogs, and perhaps even a villain or two. However headed into Paris this 12 months, one of many foremost storylines was whether or not or not town may correctly host the Video games — and whether or not Parisians even wished this within the first place.

This would be the first “regular” Olympics because the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, after the worldwide pandemic utterly altered Tokyo 2020 (a lot in order that these Video games have been really held in 2021) and the attendance-limited 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

There have been large questions on what the 2024 Video games would seem like. With a number of the occasions going down in main hubs of town — the seaside volleyball stadium overlooks the Eiffel Tower — will Paris be capable of deal with the crush of tourists coming to see the Video games? Are the safety restrictions going to make being within the metropolis a problem? Who’s going to carry out on the opening ceremonies? What’s everybody going to put on? Is the Seine River clear sufficient to swim in? Why is Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo so wanting to swim in it?

At this time, we began to get a couple of solutions.

For these first actually post-pandemic Video games, Thomas Jolly, the inventive director of the Opening Ceremony, pursued a massively bold efficiency.

Not solely did he intermingle the parade of athletes with the present — sometimes two separate parts — however he additionally took each parts out of a stadium into town itself, alongside a 6-kilometer route alongside the Seine. As a substitute of marching on a stadium ground, the athletes floated down the river on quite a lot of boats because the digicam sometimes lower away to musical and dance performances, pretaped movies highlighting Parisian or French cultural touchstones, or the mysterious masked determine hurtling by means of town like a cat burglar and carrying Olympic torch over Parisian roofs and thru town’s spooky, watery underground. Over 3,000 musical artists, dancers, actors, and circus performers participated.

At instances, it was inspiring; at others, the tried grandeur was considerably misplaced. That wasn’t all that was occurring right this moment, too.

From the Opening Ceremony of the Video games of the XXXIII Olympiad, listed here are 4 winners and 6 losers.

As a substitute of getting the festivities in a stadium, as is commonplace, French officers determined to have their graduation ceremony all through town, snaking down the Seine — and in case you hadn’t already heard about that alternative, the video intro starring French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane said as a lot. Weaving performances inside the metropolis allowed for some spectacular visuals that spotlight Paris’s historical past and gorgeous structure. You could possibly see why this metropolis is among the best on the earth.

However the tradeoff was that it wasn’t all the time TV-friendly. Due to the best way the stage was arrange and the place cameras have been positioned, Girl Gaga’s feather-filled cabaret on the Seine was lower off on the ankles, hobbling the total influence of the choreography. And, in a sequence entitled “Liberty,” with decapitated Marie Antoinettes singing alongside flamethrowers, the broad pictures did not convey the spectacle. As nation delegations floated down the Seine, it was tough to select particular person athletes — each for viewers and announcers probably inquisitive about sharing details about their skills

If you maintain an occasion in a stadium, you possibly can anticipate sight traces and work out methods to stage and block a present. Stadiums are constructed for efficiency and visuals! And Paris’s opening ceremony is the clearest instance of how arduous it’s to design a present with out these instruments.

—Alex Abad-Santos, senior correspondent

That stated, Girl Gaga nonetheless had a incredible efficiency.

One of many opening ceremony’s worst-kept surprises was Girl Gaga. Recognizing a grand piano positioned close to the river within the days beforehand, Little Monsters (the self-created title for Gaga’s devoted followers) deduced that the celebrity could be performing. And that she did, conjuring up a French cabaret quantity on the banks of the Seine. Gaga carried out Renée Jeanmaire’s “Mon Truc en Plumes” (“My Factor With Feathers”) in full plumage, displaying that she’s nonetheless probably the most theater-inclined pop star within the enterprise. After all, Gaga will star in Joker: Folie à Deux later this 12 months, a musical-ish sequel to the notorious Batman villain’s origin story. And this efficiency will, little doubt, construct hype for Gaga’s flip in that film.

In her first efficiency since she was identified with stiff-person syndrome in 2022, Celine Dion ascended the Eiffel Tower and carried out Edith Piaf’s “Hymne a L’Amour.” To be trustworthy, although the legendary vocalist sounded incredible, it wouldn’t have mattered how properly Dion carried out — merely showing in public after the bodily and emotional toll she’s endured over the previous few years could be thought of an accomplishment. That Dion delivered an exquisite triumph on one of many world’s largest phases was merely Celine.

As my colleague Josh Keating wrote earlier this week, the Paris Olympics face an unprecedented array of safety threats, from renewed worries about ISIS terrorism to the very actual hazard of Russian sabotage. Partially to maintain the athletes and the spectators protected, French officers have flooded Paris with police, and are even using a controversial synthetic intelligence system that may flag potential safety considerations. It’s all meant to meet France’s promise that Paris throughout the Olympics might be “the most secure place on the earth.”

Thus far, not so nice. Early Friday morning France was hit by what gave the impression to be coordinated arson assaults focusing on the nation’s high-speed rail traces. The consequence was quite a few canceled trains, disrupting journey plans of as much as one million folks, together with spectators, Parisians fleeing town, and probably even some athletes. Luckily, the assaults, which nobody has but claimed accountability for, induced no deaths or accidents, and the Opening Ceremonies themselves began on schedule. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless an sick omen when one thing goes fallacious earlier than the Olympic flame is even lit.

—Bryan Walsh, editorial director

With 423 complete medals within the nation’s Summer season Olympic historical past — to not point out the 1,010 received when it was a part of the Soviet Union — Russia has a stable declare as some of the profitable nations in Olympic historical past. However solely 15 athletes from Russia might be among the many greater than 10,000 Olympians in Paris. They received’t be capable of compete underneath the Russian flag, and may any of them win a gold medal, they received’t hear the Russian nationwide anthem on the medal podium.

That’s as a result of Russia has been banned from collaborating as a nationwide workforce due to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — a ban that got here on the heels of one other ban earlier due to a widespread doping scandal. (The identical goes for Russia’s shut ally Belarus.)

Partially because of this, Russia’s response to being excluded from the Paris Video games quantities to “properly, we wouldn’t wish to play in your foolish Olympics anyway.” The Video games received’t be proven on Russian TV, and the media largely appears to be ignoring the Olympics.

It’s honest to really feel dangerous for the a whole bunch of Russian athletes who have been greater than adequate to make the Video games (and probably win medals), although on the very least Moscow might be compensating them. However hopefully bitter grapes would be the extent of Russia’s reactions. There are respectable fears that Moscow may determine to sabotage the Olympics indirectly, both by means of cyberwarfare and even one thing in the actual world.

Headed into the Olympics, one of many largest questions was whether or not or not the Seine, Paris’s well-known and famously coffee-tinted river, could be protected to swim in. Town has spent $1.5 billion to scrub it and make it protected sufficient to host Olympic open-water swimming occasions. But, just like the litany of tragic man versus nature tales, all that cash and manpower might be a wasted testomony to hubris.

Earlier this spring, French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Hidalgo promised to swim within the Seine themselves, a gambit to show how protected it was. In the end, solely Hidalgo adopted by means of.

And as talked about within the NBC broadcast, it’s been raining and storming in Paris and which means sewage may move into the Seine making it unsafe to swim in. Announcers stated it was contact and go, and officers might be monitoring micro organism ranges within the river earlier than anybody will get in.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation, solely gaining independence in 2011. It solely despatched its first workforce to the Olympics within the 2016 Video games in Rio de Janeiro, which included simply three athletes. It has but to win any medals.

However this 12 months South Sudan has despatched 14 Olympians to Paris, all however two of whom are on the boys’s basketball workforce. That workforce, which is called the Brilliant Stars, has been writing a Cinderella story of its personal. With former NBA star Luol Deng as its driving drive, South Sudan made the Olympics as worldwide basketball’s high workforce in Africa. And solely a last-minute layup from Staff USA’s LeBron James saved the South Sudanese from pulling off an all-time basketball upset throughout a warmup recreation final week.

For those who’re not rooting for these guys in Paris, you’re both really on one of many 11 different basketball groups competing for gold, or you haven’t any coronary heart. Shine on, you loopy Brilliant Stars.

Since 2008, Ralph Lauren has designed the opening ceremony seems for Staff USA and 2024 is not any completely different. This 12 months, Staff USA are as soon as once more sporting blazers and pairing them with blue denims. Americana! Maybe it’s as a result of this 12 months’s outfits make the athletes resemble youngsters at a elaborate nation membership or that the uniforms look vaguely like this at each Olympics, however the design simply didn’t have the wow issue this 12 months — particularly whenever you evaluate the suits to the stunners coming from Haiti, Mongolia, and Taiwan.

Let me be clear — I’m an enormous fan of LeBron James, who’s the US workforce male flag bearer on the Opening Ceremonies. And the identical goes for tennis star Coco Gauff, presently the world’s No. 2 girls’s participant and the US workforce feminine flag bearer. And I can perceive Staff USA’s need to place two of its largest stars entrance and middle within the march down the Seine.

However right here’s the factor about big-time professional sports activities stars within the Olympics. Their Olympics will not be these Olympics. James probably cares about getting yet another NBA championship ring, whereas Gauff might be already fascinated about her probabilities on the US Open in New York. The Olympics, for extremely paid professional stars, will not be the be-all and end-all of their athletic careers.

So why not put two athletes entrance and middle on the Opening Ceremonies for whom the Paris Video games actually would be the pinnacle of their sporting life? How about 42-year-old Diana Taurasi, who’s making her unprecedented sixth Olympic look for the (actually superior to the boys’s) girls’s basketball workforce?? And for the boys, how Noah Lyles, who’s aiming to sweep the person and relay short-distance sprinting occasions? I’m certain LeBron and Coco would have gotten over it.

Lots of of 1000’s of athletes world wide competed desperately to be one of many 10,500 who made it to Paris. And from the sound of it, a whole bunch of 1000’s of Parisians are competing simply as arduous to make sure they received’t be in Paris.

Attitudes amongst Parisians towards the Paris Olympics have been profoundly combined. One survey from final 12 months discovered that just about half town was contemplating leaving throughout the Video games. To a point, not being in Paris throughout late July and August is a precondition of being a Parisian — as any vacationer who has come to the Metropolis of Gentle in the summertime can attest, precise Parisians could be arduous to search out. However the Olympics have turbocharged the migration, with the variety of Paris residences listed on Airbnb growing by 85 % over the previous 12 months. Certain, they may miss a sporting second of transcendence, however I’d in all probability quite be sunning myself on the Côte d’Azur too.