Greece and Giannis Antetokounmpo led the parade of the athletes in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris on Friday.
Instead of the traditional parade around a stadium track, more than 8,000 of the world’s top athletes are being transported by boat along 6km of the River Seine from the Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadero in a kind of sporting Armada, as more than 300,000 people watch from the bridges and riverbanks and police, frogmen and snipers stand guard.
The first boat to sail through the River Seine carried representatives of Team Greece. Giannis Antetokounmpo who was officially appointed the flag bearer for Greece at the Paris Olympics, alongside athlete Antigoni Drisbioti, led the flotilla.
There were water cannon and fireworks going off, someone ςασ playing an accordion while wearing angel wings sitting on the edge of a bridge as Team Greece passed through.
Why Greece leads the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games
Greek athletes lead the athletes’ parade simply because Greece is the place where the Olympic Games in ancient times, and the Modern Olympics were born.
The order of the athletes’ parade in the opening ceremony is otherwise alphabetical, based on the language of the host country.
While the athletes glide down the river, dancers, pop stars, tightrope walkers and acrobats perform daring feats on water, rooftops, bridges and artificial islands using pontoons, floating pianos, helicopters and possibly even submarines, before a vast laser show finale is beamed from the Eiffel Tower.
As the athletes sail, a show unfurls around them, described by its organizers as revolutionary and irreverent, as well as full of surprises.
Tight security for the Olympic Games
Paris 2024 is the 30th edition of the Summer Games and the third time Paris has had the privilege of hosting, having also held the Olympics in 1900 and 1924.
Thousands of police have been deployed in Paris to secure a safe Olympiad. Security forces are on alert after saboteurs attacked France’s high-speed railway network in a series of “malicious acts” that brought chaos to the country’s busiest rail lines hours before the Olympics opening ceremony.
The state-owned railway operator, SNCF, said arsonists targeted installations along the high-speed TGV lines connecting Paris with the country’s west, north and east, and traffic would be severely disrupted across the country during the weekend.
“This is a massive attack on a large scale to paralyse the TGV network,” the SNCF said, adding that many services would have to be cancelled and the situation would last “at least all weekend while repairs are conducted”.
Call for Olympic truce
Earlier, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on those at conflict around the world to silence their guns as part of the Olympic truce.
Guterres met International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and said the Games were a chance for peace. “I want to express the total support of the United Nations to the IOC,” Guterres said.
“We live in a divided world where conflicts are proliferating in a dramatic way. The horrendous suffering in Gaza, the seemingly endless war in Ukraine, terrible suffering from Sudan to the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), from the Sahel to Myanmar. In a moment like this it is important to say that the first recorded, in history, real peace initiative was the Olympic truce.”
In ancient Greece, all conflicts ceased for the duration of the Olympics. “In a moment in which the Olympic Games will start it is time to remind the world of the importance of the Olympic truce and to make the world understand that we must silence the guns,” he added.
