The best ceremony in the history of the Games ends in Paris

It was easy to achieve success. Even with the rain, which at times intensified and interfered with the unique lighting, any shot of the Seine will always be a hymn to good taste.But Paris, which closed its airspace for four hours, outdid itself and presented the most revolutionary ceremony ever. Above all, because it combined the real with the virtual in a story. And it ended with a fantasy finale featuring Zidane, Nadal, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, a message of universality from the capital of the world.

At a time when citizens’ lives are spent in front of screens, the Olympic Games, a haven of tradition, They were presented to the world with a riot of grandeur and avant-garde. It was also a demand for equality, which the event achieved in this edition by equalizing the quotas for men and women. There were only two anachronistic elements: in an era when human attention is unstable, too many things were happening at once. And four hours of anything is hard to digest.

The parade, which had been a key element in other episodes, was gobbled up. It was no longer the central axis and became a caravan like the Three Wise Men, but without the candy.and where the flag bearers, not a few meters ahead, lost their solemnity to become the groom at the stag party. It began, as always, with Greece, followed by a team of refugees, each edition was bigger, and France, the host, closed it with the novelty that it was preceded by Australia, host of 2032, and the United States, Los Angeles of 2028.

Spain shared the barge with Estonia because the order was in French alphabetical order. Israel, which shared with Italy, was lightly booed; Ukraine was cheered on both sides. There were 85 boats of all sizes. An electric pleasure boat was sent to the Marshall Islands. Since participation in the Games is the goal of many lives and the athletes showed happiness despite the rain, we will have to accept this as a given. Outwardly, the trip turned into a mess.

The common thread was picked up by the transportation of the Olympic flame. From Saint-Denis, captured on video by Zinedine Zidane, to the Trocadero. The mysterious character with the face covered by a net, who walked on the roofs of the Orsay Museum, traveled on a zipline along the river near Notre Dame, was the one who, late at night in Paris, took up the torch to become the protagonist, while the music went from Lady Gaga (she sang in French) to a cancan, to rock music from Gojira to emphasize the French Revolution, freedom and the Conspiracy from the opera Carmen. The anonymous protagonist did so much and so many different things in Thomas Jolly’s script that he was played by several people. The last one, the one riding a horse, was an officer of the gendarmerie.

France’s immense cultural wealth allows for all of this. Return to music with Aya Nakamura, the singer who has sold the most albums in French history. and then use the screen to demonstrate their invention. That he and the Lumière brothers also invented cinema. Previously, references had been made to literature by Victor Hugo and others, painting (the alleged theft of the Mona Lisa), and the theatre of great authors such as Moliere.

The ceremony was planned in 12 stages, reflecting the virtues of France. Charm, synchronicity, freedom, equality (memory with statues of the 10 most important women in the history of the country, Simone de Beauvoir, as the most international), brotherhood, fraternity, sportsmanship, celebration, darkness (a call for peace with the chords of Imagine), solidarity, solemnity and eternity. The integration of screens, of which there were 71 along the river, also allowed to remember Saint-Exupéry with The Little Prince, the book of an entire generation.

The parade moved on to the sports area, where much attention was paid to the bicycles that compete in the Tour de France and have become fashionable. More than 1,800 people worked on the costumes for the show, which drew 20,000 people on Friday.

At 9:54 p.m. the French parcel arrived at the Trocadero, to the delirium of the Parisians, who began the spectacle with all their chauvinism. smoke of the colors of the French flag on the Austerlitz bridge and the accordionist playing The bridge on the Lena was filled with flowers, the Eiffel Tower was blue, President Macron stood up to applaud (at last joy was in his mouth) and the globality of the European Union and disco music (Eurovision) entered to hint at diversity and turn the Seine into a big dance floor with songs from the last 30 years. The rain did not stop. Let’s see if this night will lead to casualties at the Games.

Then an anonymous masked man donned an Olympic flag instead of a cape. and crossed the Seine on a robotic constructor to become reality at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in a magic trick, while a summary of the greatest moments in the Games’ history was projected.

The speeches came when the third hour had already passed. Thomas Bach secretly praised himself for his handling of the Russian and Palestinian conflicts: “In a world torn apart by wars and conflicts, solidarity has triumphed and we are here together,” said the IOC president, and after the Olympic oath, the surprises began. Zidane reappeared. The masked man handed the flame to him, who in turn passed it to Rafa Nadal. The Eiffel Tower darkened, turning into a changing play of light that heightened the tension over who would light the cauldron. The 14-time Roland Garros champion passed the baton to Serena Williams in a boat, she to Carl Lewis, and the athlete to Nadia Comaneci. The Paris sky was already a Xanadu of lights.

Megastars stoke the flame to ignite Amelie Mauresmo’s flame The great tennis player, who is now the director of Roland Garros, rose from the pier closest to the Louvre and. He passed the baton to Tony Parker. In front of the pyramid, various French Olympic and Paralympic stars, up to 20 different ones, swept through the Tuileries Garden. Finally, judoka Teddy Riner and athlete Marie José Perec, three-time Olympic champions, approached the balloon-shaped cauldron, lit it, and it rose into the sky, ending the best ceremony in history.