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2024 Paris Olympics Dispatch: Scenes from the Seine as the Opening Ceremony wows soaked crowds

jay busbee
Senior writer
·4 min read

PARIS — It was a wild, wet day and night in Paris as the Opening Ceremonies got underway. Here's what things were like along the Seine before, during and after the day's events.

It’s tough to tell how much of the crowd in downtown Paris was there to watch the Opening Ceremony, and how much was just looking to enjoy a Friday night. Around the Les Halles shopping mall, you could see a few TEAM USA T-shirts or JAMAICA jerseys or French tricolore face paints, but most people looked exactly like they probably do every weekend in Paris. A notable exception: the 200-person-long line for the tiny Olympic souvenir store at Les Halles. Got to get those Phryges while you can.

The rain rolled in right around the time the first boats did, and the crowds on the Pont du Chance bridge weathered it as best they could. Some sat in large grandstands, others stood at the edge of the bridge, watching as boats laden with athletes passed under them. Many would watch the boats pass beneath them on one side of the bridge, and then sprint over to the other side, trying to get a look at their favorite athletes both coming and going.

As they passed beneath the bridge, some of the athletes did crowd work — Romania, for instance, managed to get the crowd waving their arms in unison. Athletes from Sudan whistled loud enough to be heard on the banks. The three largest cheers of the night went to France (obviously), the United States and Ukraine.

From a performance perspective, the Pont du Chance crowd got a double-dip: the orchestra-and-water dancers showcase and the Marie Antoinette-and-metal-guitar thrashing were in buildings right next to one another at the end of the bridge. It was a whiplash of styles, and it was one of the night’s high points.

Law enforcement was everywhere, and you couldn’t walk more than a few steps without someone checking your credentials, just to be sure. The authorities ranged from try-hard mall cop types to sunglassed, emotionless special forces. But they all did exactly what they’d been brought into town to do.

More than a few in the crowd chanced fate by leaning out over the water, holding their phones above the water and the passing boats — in a steady, soaking rain — to get that perfect photo. No athlete apparently ended up in the water, but a phone or two probably did.

Once the boats passed the Pont Du Chance, there wasn’t a whole lot to do but watch the rest of the evening play out on the big screen. Except for the strange horse-riding knight zipping past briefly, that was the end of the evening for this portion of the Seine. And the people in the grandstand and on the bridge suffered through the same momentum-killing drag that the rest of the world did when the speeches started … with the notable difference that the rest of the world probably wasn’t standing out in the rain.

In the distance, you could see the lights flashing on the upper reaches of the Eiffel Tower, and the cauldron’s flames lit the underside of the low cloud cover orange. But all the energy that had been in the crowd when the boats passed floated up and away by the time the cauldron ignited.

Maybe it’s just our American need to have everything end with an explosion, but there was a definite anticlimactic feel to the way the Opening Ceremony ended. The cauldron floated away into the air, the Eiffel Tower sparkled one last time, and then … that was it. The “thanks for coming” messages flashed on the enormous video screens on either side of the river, and the soggy crowd — what was left of it, at least — filed out and into the city.

Along Boulevard de Sebastopol, life returned quickly to its normal pace. A crepe maker did a brisk business, dishing out late-night eats to an eager and hungry throng. Bars and cafes welcomed in soaked patrons. A shirtless Frenchman wearing some kind of leather straps across his chest and forehead talked trash to cafe-goers, until three of the thousands of cops ushered him on down the street. Exhausted French children up well past their bedtime wailed, their cries echoing off the buildings, and you didn’t need a translator to understand what that meant. We know exactly how you feel, kiddos.