Paris holds its breath before Olympics opening ceremony

Paris was on Thursday counting down the hours to the most ambitious Olympics opening ceremony in history on the river Seine.

The show today evening will see up to 7,500 competitors sail down a six-kilometre stretch of the Seine on 85 boats, accompanied by a performance blending French culture and Olympic values that organisers promise will be spectacular.

Compared to the Covid-blighted Tokyo Olympics, where the Games were delayed by a year and opened in an empty stadium, the Paris ceremony will take place in front of 300,000 spectators and an audience of VIPs and celebrities from around the world.

The line-up of performers is a closely guarded secret but US pop star Lady Gaga and French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura – the most listened-to French-speaking singer in the world – are rumoured to be among them. The ceremony will take place amid an unprecedented security operation.

Central Paris has been turned into a fortress, with metal barriers along both banks of the Seine. Only residents and people with hotel bookings can enter the high-security area. Police snipers are set to be positioned on every high point along the route, with an assassination attempt on US presidential candidate Donald Trump on July 13 helping focus minds. Israel and the Palestinian team will be given extra security with the tensions from the Israeli offensive in Gaza feared to be a potential motive for would-be attackers.

At the Games on Thursday, women’s football took centre stage after a chaotic start to the sporting action in the men’s football 24 hours earlier. The Spanish women’s football team, the reigning world champions who are making their first-ever Olympics appearance, beat Japan 2-1 thanks to goals from 2023 world player of the year Aitana Bonmati and Mariona Caldentey.

Scandal-hit reigning champions Canada overcame New Zealand 2-1 without their coach Bev Priestman on the sidelines after she decided it would be inappropriate following incidents of Canadian staff spying on their opponents’ training sessions with drones. Canada’s assistant coach and an analyst were dismissed from the Olympics for their part in the affair.

It all added up to a difficult start for the football at the Games after a chaotic end to Argentina men’s match against Morocco when the football kicked off on Wednesday. Morocco beat the two-time Olympic champions 2-1 in Saint-Etienne, but only after a late equaliser for the South American side was disallowed and the final minutes took place in an empty stadium following crowd trouble.

The tennis draw threw up a mouthwatering potential second-round tie between 2008 gold medallist Rafael Nadal and 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, while two-time Olympic champion Andy Murray withdrew from the singles. "I am excited for this duel in the second round, and I will give it my all,” said Djokovic.

US gymnastics superstar Simone Biles, set to once again be one of the faces of the Olympics, got her first taste of the Bercy Arena as she trained ahead of the start of competition at the weekend. Biles is strongly tipped to add to her haul of four Olympic golds at the Paris Games after a tumultuous campaign in Tokyo three years ago, when she pulled out of most of her events as she battled the disorientating condition that gymnasts call "twisties”.

In other developments, US Olympic chiefs on Thursday called for an end to the feud between American anti-doping officials and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after renewed verbal sparring. Gene Sykes, the chairman of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said WADA and the US Anti-Doping Agency had been "playing ping pong with media bullets” since revelations about a 2021 doping scandal involving Chinese swimmers emerged.

The acrimony between the two bodies flared again on Wednesday, with the International Olympic Committee warning US officials they could be stripped of the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City if WADA was not respected as the "supreme authority” of the anti-doping movement. "What we want to do is to cool the tempers and find a way for these organisations to constructively work better together,” Sykes said.