PARIS — After a spectacular opening ceremony on the River Seine, Marie-José Pérec and Teddy Riner lit the Olympic cauldron to officially open the 2024 Games here on Friday.
And it was not just any Olympic cauldron, but a seven-metre-wide ring of flames topped by a 30-metre-high hot-air balloon.
Olympic organizers said the cauldron was “a tribute to the first flight in a balloon filled with hydrogen gas,” which took place in Paris in 1783. In December of that year, the hot air balloon became the first aircraft to carry humans when two of its French inventors, physicist Jacques Charles and engineer Nicolas-Louis Robert, took off from the Tuileries Gardens.
And so, 241 years later, the Olympic hot-air balloon cauldron was lit and lifted off from those very Tuileries Gardens, nestled between two of Paris’ many iconic landmarks, the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde.
One of France’s most celebrated Olympians, Pérec won three gold medals in athletics at the 1992 and 1996 Games. In 2013, she was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest honour.
Standing 1.93 metres tall and weighing 130 kilos, Riner, nicknamed “Teddy Bear”, is one of the most imposing athletes in French history. He has won Olympic gold medals in judo three times and triumphed at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Games.
All of this had been a closely guarded secret until the Olympic torch snaked through a rainy Paris on Friday and arrived on the banks of the Seine. Hundreds of athletes, workers, celebrities and more had carried it across France over the past two and a half months. But the final stages of the relay, as always, were shrouded in mystery.
For most of the Opening Ceremony, a mysterious torchbearer carried the flame through the city, past the Louvre, over buildings and through a Louis Vuitton workshop.
When the flame arrived at the Trocadero, where more than 6,500 athletes had been waiting for them to cross the Seine during a parade lasting more than two hours, it was in the hands of football legend Zinedine Zidane, who handed it over to Spaniard Rafael Nadal. The 14-time French Open winner boarded a boat with Serena Williams, Nadia Comaneci and Carl Lewis. The foursome then set off back down the Seine towards the Louvre.
From there, the torch was passed between several French athletes, including Amelie Mauresmo (winner of two Grand Slam titles and the only French woman to be ranked No. 1 in the world) and NBA champion Tony Parker, and finally Perec and Riner.
The two former Olympians lit the base of the balloon, which then ascended into the sky where it will remain for the remainder of these Games.
