A city scarred by terrorism prepares an Olympic opening without walls
A terrorist attack of 2015 that left her city angry and heartbroken persuaded Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, to campaign for the Olympic Games.
“I said to myself, ‘We need to do something that is unifying,’” she said in an interview this month, remembering the horrifying afternoon when masked gunmen charged into the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and opened fire that January, killing 12. “Something that is very powerful, very peaceful and allows us to move forward. So, I threw myself into it.”
Nine years later, the Summer Olympics are set to open in Paris in July with France at its highest level of terrorism alert, after the attack on the Moscow concert hall last month. Yet for the first time, the opening ceremony will not be held inside the barricaded confines of a stadium. Instead, athletes will float in boats down the Seine River through the heart of the dense, ancient city before half a million spectators packed into stands and leaning out of windows. Although some say that makes the ceremony an obvious target, Hidalgo and other government officials express full confidence in their safety plan. “The best response is to do it, but to do it seriously and professionally,” the mayor said, adding, “If we don’t do it because we’re afraid, than they’ve won. And they didn’t win.” Many security experts have also said they have faith in the preparations.
“Paris will be bunkerized under the current plan for the opening ceremony,” said Frédéric Péchenard, the former head of France’s national police. “The French police have spared no expense.” Officials brewed up the idea for the ceremony to produce a spectacle that was completely new, was open to many and would “show France under its best light,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a recent television interview. The goal, he said, was “to show that we can do extraordinary things.” Even so, the security challenges are obvious and myriad. The procession will cover 3.7 miles of the river, passing hundreds of historic buildings of different eras, shapes and sizes, including the Louvre and Eiffel Tower. There are more than 100 access points, uneven roofs and incongruent windows, and a labyrinth of pipes, tunnels and sewers underneath. Then there is the river, with its own swells, eddies, connections and traffic. “It will require a very long, very complex security operation that won’t eliminate all the risks,” said Bertrand Cavallier, a former commander at France’s national military police training school.
Since the 2015 deadly Islamist attacks, France has become sadly accustomed to terrorist threats and to soldiers patrolling its crowded squares and train stations, their fingers resting near the triggers of machine guns. The latest one was in December, killing a tourist and injuring three others.
Olympics organizers say the potential for terrorism was stitched into the plan for the Games from the start. Over the months of preparation, in response to security concerns, they have adjusted some of the original plans for the opening ceremony — for example, by cutting the number of spectators permitted along the river.
They also point to their experience with big events. For example, in 2016, France hosted the European soccer championships, drawing some 600,000 foreign spectators, noted Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympic Committee. Even very public failures, like dangerous crowd control problems at the 2022 Champions League soccer final that were blamed on mistakes by the security services, have offered important lessons, officials say. “Every decision that has been made since 2015 was made through the lens of security,” Estanguet said in an interview.
He added, “For three years now, we know precisely day by day, site by site, almost hour by hour, our needs.”
The broad outlines of the plan have been made public.
The areas immediately bordering both sides of the river, stretching miles beyond the ceremony’s course, will be marked as a protected zone that will be closed to motorised vehicles eight days before the ceremony.