PARIS: The Paris Olympics were getting off to a rough start Friday, with suspected acts of sabotage targeting France's flagship high-speed rail network and cloudy skies, with rain forecast, over the French capital ahead of its sprawling, audacious opening ceremony.
On a day of utmost importance for France and its capital, with dozens of heads of state and government in town for the Olympic opening and a global audience topping 1 billion expected to tune in, authorities were scrambling to deal with widespread rail disruptions caused by what they described as coordinated overnight sabotage of high-speed train lines.
Overcast skies over Paris further dampened the mood.
Together, travel chaos in Paris train stations and the drizzly weather underscored potential vulnerabilities of the host city's bold decisions to break with Olympic traditions and stage an opening ceremony like no other.
By turning the whole of central Paris into a giant open-air theater for the ceremony that starts at 7:30 p.m., Paris organizers have bigger crowds to transport, organize and safeguard than would have been the case if they'd followed the example of previous Olympic host cities that opened in stadiums.
Some spectators who followed organizers' advice to arrive well ahead of time along the ceremony route fumed over long waits to get to their seats.
“Paris has been great, anything to do with the Olympics and dissemination of information has been horrible,” said Tony Gawne, a 54-year-old Texan who turned up six hours in advance with his wife.
"When you spend $6,000 on two tickets, well, that’s a little frustrating.”
While evening rains forecast by national weather service Meteo France shouldn't delay the ceremony and many of its planned surprises, Paris organizers had been crossing their fingers for clear skies to assist with their vision of showcasing the city and its iconic monuments.
Wet weather could make the ceremony a more fatiguing experience for the thousands of Olympians parading on boats on the Seine River and the hundreds of thousands of spectators on its banks and bridges — many more than could have been squeezed into France's national stadium.
Paris organizers said they expect 6,800 of the 10,500 athletes will attend before they embark on the next 16 days of competition.
“Of course when you organize an outdoor spectacle, you prefer good weather,” the Paris Games’ chief organizer, Tony Estanguet, said on France Inter radio.
But the ceremony “was thought out so it can be held in the rain,” he said. “It will perhaps be a bit different,” he added. “We'll adapt.”
And Paris still has plenty of aces up its sleeve. The Eiffel Tower, its head still visible below the clouds, Notre Dame Cathedral — restored from the ashes of its 2019 fire — the Louvre Museum and other iconic monuments will star in the opening ceremony.
So Paris is going big, very big. That goes for the security, too. Large fenced-off stretches of central Paris are locked down to those without passes and the skies during the ceremony will be a no-fly zone for 150 kilometers (93 miles) around.
