The first Summer Olympic Games in Paris in 100 years kicked off Friday with a one-of-a-kind opening ceremony held on the city’s main artery celebrating the cultural diversity of France.
Some 6,800 athletes from 205 national delegations, including the Refugee Olympic team, marked the start of the 17-day competition by riding boats equipped with cameras on a 6-kilometer floating parade on the Seine River. This was the first Summer Olympic opening ceremony to take place outside a stadium.
Watched by 320,000 spectators from the river banks, the athletes sailed past many of the French capital’s landmarks, including the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum, and the Eiffel Tower.
The ceremony began under the cloud of what French officials said were coordinated arson attacks on the high-speed rail network in the host city earlier Friday. Rain that soaked Paris didn’t dampen the festive mood once the opening ceremony transformed the city’s iconic monuments into stages for performers.
Officials set up 71 giant
screens and 1,000 loudspeakers along the parade route
As per tradition, Greece, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, was the first to enter, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team. As the host, France was the last nation in the parade, immediately preceded by the hosts of the next two Summer Games, the United States (2028) and Australia (2032).
The remaining teams came in alphabetical order in French. South Korea used its formal name, Republic of Korea, and was the 48th nation to enter as Republique de Coree.
High jumper Woo Sang-hyeok and swimmer Kim Seo-young served as co-flag bearers for South Korea, which has 143 athletes in 21 sports for this Olympics.
South Korea has fielded its smallest Summer Games delegation since the 1976 Montreal Olympics, because it failed to qualify for most of the team events, such as men’s and women’s football, men’s and women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s basketball.
The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC) has set a modest target of winning five gold medals, w
hich could put South Korea around 15th in the medal table. It would be the smallest gold medal total in 48 years.
The medal race begins Saturday, and South Korea will be chasing medals in swimming, shooting and fencing. The country has won a gold medal on the first day of each of the past four Summer Olympic Games.
The open-air ceremony was a nod to the motto of the competition, “Games Wide Open.” Put together by theater director Thomas Jolly, the opening show was split into 12 sections, with about 3,000 performers positioned on both banks of the Seine, the bridges and monuments around the river.
Paris is the second city, after London, to stage the Summer Olympics three times.
Source: Yonhap News Agency