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Boats and cast members rehearse on the River Seine for the Opening Ceremony of Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 24.
CNN
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Paris 2024 will truly feature an Olympics Opening Ceremony like no other. Here’s everything you need to know about this unique celebration.
The Opening Ceremony for the Paris Summer Games will begin at 7:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET) on Friday, July 26, as the first boats depart from the Austerlitz bridge.
It will be available to view in the US on NBC and on will also be streaming on Peacock.
For the first time in Summer Games history, it will be held outside of a stadium. Instead, athletes will this year parade down the city’s famous River Seine on boats.
Going east to west through the city, 10,500 athletes on 94 boats will be ferried down a six-kilometer (roughly 3.7 miles) route that ends in front of the famous Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower, where the rest of the Opening Ceremony shows will take place, such as the lighting of the Olympic cauldron and the official opening speech from French President Emmanuel Macron.
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There will be dancers on every bridge along the route.
The boats will pass some of Paris’ most iconic landmarks, including the Louvre and Notre-Dame.
Each boat will also have a camera on board so viewers can feel as if they’re amongst the action with their favorite athletes.
The nations with bigger athlete delegations will have their own boats, while those with a smaller number of athletes will share.
There will be 80 big screens up across the city and “strategically placed speakers,” organizers said, to allow as many fans as possible to watch the event.
Fortunately for organizers, hundreds of dancers that were threatening to disrupt the Opening Ceremony over pay have called off strike action after reaching an agreement with Paris 2024, according to their union.
On Monday, some 220 dancers stopped a rehearsal along the banks of the Seine to protest inequalities in pay and housing conditions between the dancers.
A representative for the union previously told CNN that the ceremony was “in danger.”
In total, there will be 400 dancers involved and dancers on every bridge along the route.
French theatre director and actor Thomas Jolly is leading the Opening Ceremony and said earlier this year he wants to showcase all of France’s cultures.
“I was overwhelmed at first. I wondered how I could create a show where everyone can feel represented as part of this great union,” he told AP.
“This responsibility was ambitious, complex, but magnificent for an artist.”
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Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt looks back at his Olympic competitors during a 100-meter semifinal in 2016. Bolt won the final a short time later, becoming the first man in history to win the 100 meters at three straight Olympic Games. Bolt, the world-record holder in the 100 and 200 meters, won eight gold medals during his legendary Olympic career.
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American athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos raise their fists and hang their heads while the US National Anthem plays during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Their gesture became front-page news around the world as a symbol of the struggle for civil rights. To their left stood Australian Peter Norman, who expressed his support by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge.
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American high jumper Dick Fosbury clears the bar on the way to winning Olympic gold in 1968. His back-first jumping style revolutionized the sport, and the "Fosbury Flop" is now used by almost everyone who competes in the event.
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US gymnast Kerri Strug injured her ankle on her second-to-last vault during the team competition at the 1996 Summer Games. But with a gold medal in the balance, she still had to go once more and land on her feet. She did just that, clinching victory and making her an American hero.
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US track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Games, which took place in Berlin during the rule of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Hitler wanted the Games to showcase what he believed to be the racial superiority of white Aryan athletes, but Owens spoiled that idea and became a cultural icon.
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Michael Jordan soars for a dunk during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Jordan was a part of the "Dream Team," the US men's basketball team that was the first to include NBA stars. Many consider that team, which included Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and many other future Hall of Famers, to be the greatest sports team ever assembled.
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Muhammad Ali rose to prominence at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, where he claimed a gold medal in the light-heavyweight division. The story goes that when he returned to a hometown parade, even with the medal around his neck, he was refused service in a segregated restaurant because of his race. According to several reports, he threw the medal into a river out of anger. The story is disputed by people who say Ali misplaced the medal. Thirty-six years later, he was given a replacement medal and asked to light the cauldron at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, something he said was one of the greatest honors in his athletic career.
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US swimmer Katie Ledecky was one of the biggest stars of 2016, winning five Olympic golds and setting two world records — one in the 400-meter freestyle and one in the 800-meter freestyle. She was the first swimmer since 1968 to win the 200-, 400- and 800-meter freestyles at the same Olympics. Here, Ledecky obliterates the field in the 800-meter final. She won by 11.38 seconds.
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American long jumper Bob Beamon obliterated the world record by more than 21 inches in 1968, leaping an astonishing 9 feet, 2 1/2 inches (8.90 meters). Beamon was so stunned by the distance that he collapsed to the ground in what doctors later diagnosed as a cataplectic seizure brought on by nervous excitement. The record stood until 1991.
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Rulon Gardner, a Greco-Roman wrestler for the United States, made history in 2000 when he defeated Russia's Aleksandr Karelin in the gold-medal match of the 130-kilogram (287-pound) weight class. Karelin, the gold medalist in 1988, 1992 and 1996, had not lost a match in 13 years.
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Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila became the first Black African to win Olympic gold when he won the marathon in world-record time in 1960. And he did it in his bare feet, just the way he had trained.