LE PECQ.- The gigantic inauguration ceremony that Paris plans to celebrate on the Seine River for the opening of the Olympic Games could be postponed if France is hit again by extremist attacks in the run-up, French president said Emmanuel Macron.
Macron’s comments in a television interview Wednesday night were a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes details of planning the July 26 ceremony. Many details about the show remain a secret to maintain the expected surprise factor. Security, with tens of thousands of police and soldiers deployed, will be intense.
The athletes will parade through the heart of the French capital on boats on the Seine, in the first opening ceremony of some Summer Games which will be held outside a usual stadium. Both banks of the river will be packed with hundreds of thousands of spectators, behind multiple security cordons.
“We are preparing a unique opening ceremony, which I hope will make the French proud“Macron said on France 5. “It will be a moment of beauty, of real art, of celebration of sport and our values, with the Seine and the French capital as the theater.”
But he said the plans could be revised for security reasons.. He recalled the deadly extremist attacks that hit Paris in 2015 as an example of the type of serious crisis that could force a rethink of the situation.
“You are 15 days away from the Olympic Games. You have a series of terrorist attacks. What are you doing? Well, you don’t organize (a ceremony) on the Seine,” Macron said.
“As we are professionals, Obviously there is plan B, plan C, etc.. You have to be prepared for everything,” she added. “If there is an increase in international or regional tensions, if there are a series of attacks… that is a plan B.”
Paris will be under the magnifying glass:
For the moment, the organizers of the Paris Games They say the ceremony along the Seine is their plan A. The French theater director Thomas Jolly is overseeing its artistic content and the closing ceremony at the Stade de France on August 11.
At a year-end news conference on Wednesday, ahead of a subsequent television interview by Macron, the main organizer of the Paris Games, Tony Estanguet, He said that the Sena ceremony is “the only project we are working on.”
Source: AP
