Headline : A glorious finale but otherwise the Olympics opening ceremony was a damp squib

Read more from the original article on here at www.telegraph.co.uk.

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It took nearly five hours, but finally showbiz arrived at the Paris 2024 Olympic opening ceremony when Celine Dion belted out the concluding number from halfway up the Eiffel Tower. What a moment that was. And fair play to those who hung around to watch and applaud her effort, soaked to the skin every one of them.

You might have noticed it was raining in Paris as the Games got under way. The artistic director, Thomas Jolly, had said earlier in the week he was hoping for an Instagram-friendly golden hour of sunset, or, for a touch of drama, a proper pyrotechnical storm. Instead he got a miserable downpour from steel-grey clouds, of a sort familiar to anyone who has ever holidayed in Rhyl. The point of the ceremony he had created was to showcase the host city, to advertise its glorious architecture. This was to be Paris’s moment in the sun. But the weather threatened to turn an idea that promised so much into the dampest of damp squibs.

And never mind the thrilling audacity of switching things from a stadium to a riverbank, never mind the technical complications required to make flames splutter up and around the city’s landmarks, never mind a featured collaboration between the opera singer Marina Viotti and death metal band Gojira (the Japanese name for Godzilla) booming out together, and never mind Dion’s glorious conclusion, what most will remember is that picture of the Emir of Qatar struggling to work out how to put on a poncho.

There were more than 350,000 people gathered along the banks of the Seine, determined to party. This was to be the most democratic opening ceremony ever, the doors flung wide to the biggest possible audience to witness it live. It was like the University Boat Race along the river, except instead of watching student rowers trundling by, the many thronging the banks were witness to some of the finest athletes in world sport looking as if they had just emerged fully clothed from the shower.

Read more from the original article on here at www.telegraph.co.uk.

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