PARIS:

The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics next Friday will be a joyful, daring and atypical spectacle with artists and athletes celebrating Paris, France and the Games together along the River Seine, the ceremony’s organizers said.

Unlike previous Olympic Games, the opening ceremony of Paris 2024 will not take place in a stadium. Instead, dozens of boats will carry thousands of athletes and artists along a 6km route along the Seine.

“We know how important the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is. It’s important for the athletes, it’s important for the country that’s hosting it,” Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympics organizing committee, told reporters.

“That’s why we’ve been very ambitious from the start, because we really want this Opening Ceremony to embody all the ambitions of Paris 2024: bold, atypical Games, showcasing the best of France.”

Details, such as which artists will take part and who will carry the torch and light the Olympic flame to mark the start of the Games, have been kept under wraps. The ceremony’s artistic team said they had been rehearsing in private to keep everything under wraps.

But what is known is that there will be a floating parade, departing from the Austerlitz Bridge, passing Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral and arriving at the Eiffel Tower, with the show also making use of nearby monuments and combining music, light and dance. “We will have some clichés (about France), but we will also share what Paris is, what France is today,” Thomas Jolly, the opening ceremony’s artistic director, told reporters.

More than 300,000 spectators will watch from the banks of the river, with hundreds of millions more expected to tune in on TV or social media. “I’m very impatient … I want to share it now because (we) have been working on this ceremony for two years … and I’m so impatient to share it with the world,” Jolly said.

“We are not going to say anything about the artists (who will take part in the ceremony), but it will be a wonderful evening with many important people who will have something to celebrate with us about Paris.” Jolly said the show would last about three and three-quarter hours and would be “a great fresco” that “will interweave the parade of athletes, the artistic paintings and the elements of protocol that will be performed.”

“That is the moment to celebrate the relationship that Paris, France, has with the world at a time when the world enters Paris and the world will look at Paris,” he said.

Maud Le Pladec, the ceremony’s choreographer, said: “It will be a total show, everything will be mixed.” “This is a popular show, but (you will see) how we can also make it chic, how we can make it à la Francaise.”

The Olympic Games will take place from July 26 to August 11, while the Paralympic Games will take place from August 28 to September 8.

Australian hockey player Matt Dawson has done everything he can to compete in the Paris Olympics, including amputating part of his finger to be fit for his third Games.

The 30-year-old, a silver medalist at the Tokyo Games, was a doubt for Paris after recently breaking the ring finger on his right hand. Doctors gave him the option of amputating part of his finger or having it repaired. There was only one way to ensure he would make it to Paris.

“I didn’t have much time to make a decision,” he told Australian broadcaster Seven Network. “I made the decision and then I called my wife and she said, ‘I don’t want you to make a hasty decision.’

“But I think I had all the information I needed to make a decision, not only to play in Paris, but also for life after and to give myself the best health.”