Let the Games begin! We’ve just experienced the most unique Opening Ceremonies in Olympic history. We break it down from two perspectives–Jill was on the Seine for the show (in the rain), and Alison was at a watch party. Who had the better time?
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TRANSCRIPT
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Paris 2024 Opening Ceremonies
Jill: Bonjour et bienvenue des Jeux Olympiques à Paris 2024. I’m your host Jill Jaracz and I’m joined by my lovely co host Alison Brown. Alison, hello. Bonjour. How are you?
Alison: I’m a little frightened. What, what, what French spirit just possessed you for a moment?
Jill: I was standing a long time today. You were. I had time to
Alison: think.
You were. So we’re going to talk about the opening ceremony. Jill got to go. I went to the Paris Media Center for a watch party. I definitely got the drier, better fed end of this bargain.
Jill: Yeah. I’m, I’m wet. I am dirty. But I had a great time.
Alison: As did I. So I think it all worked out.
Jill: All right. A little, uh, let’s begin the baguette.
We’re going to make this quick because we want to spend most of this time on the show. Uh, safety dance.
Alison: Cabs are working. This is great. We got, we got the taxi app. Our two drivers so far have been lovely. Got us home safely. So, we’re doing okay.
Jill: That’s good, because we are getting home at one, as we tape it is 1.
23 in the morning. So, you know, we are getting home pretty late, so thank you taxi, taxi drivers, keep it up. Uh, the other big thing that we went to today. Which is when you think Olympics, you don’t think I get to go to a press conference with Flava Flav.
Alison: So in the U. S. there has been a lot of posts and news stories about how Flava Flav has become the main sponsor of the U. S. women’s water polo team. Now this is multi gold medal winning team. Our Shukla Stani Maggie Steffens had posted about how the team And the team as individuals are really struggling financially and Flava Flav and his clock have stepped up and put his money where his mouth is and is really helping these women out and put his mouth.
to hype the team. Yes. He’s doing a ton of publicity. And one of those things was today’s press conference at 945 in the morning. We came in this morning and I said, Jill, there’s a press conference with Flava Flav. And you didn’t, you thought I, I think you thought I was kidding.
Jill: What is he? Why would there be a press conference with Flava Flava?
And I knew he was the hype man. I knew he was the hype man, but I did not think they would bring him in for a press conference. And yet USA Water Polo did.
Alison: They did. It was not a very full press conference. I think people It was a joke, to be honest. Like, I don’t think they looked at that schedule and said, What is that?
Jill: Or they didn’t look at the schedule.
Alison: Fair, because it’s opening ceremony day and you didn’t look. And, honestly, what a joy.
Jill: Yes.
Alison: Flava Flav is so genuine in his support of this team and his support of these women. And, um, You know, put your money in it. And he really has and gets out there and talks about how hard these women work and how hard this sport is and how great it is.
And he’s made an agreement with USA Water Polo for a five year sponsorship.
Jill: That is incredible to me. And it’s fantastic because that takes them basically through LA 2028. It’ll be, you know, wonderful for the team. They get a lot more exposure because water polo is an amazing sport. And you know, they’re in the lump of athletes who don’t, who aren’t able to make a living here.
And I would imagine for women, especially, we know that that men have water polo. professional leagues in Europe, but I have actually have not heard women having that.
Alison: It’s certainly going to be smaller, just like all women’s sports. They’re not going to have as much money. You know, most American players go to, uh, Italy or Montenegro or Croatia to play professionally and at least earning their own money.
Whether the team is well funded is a separate issue, but at least they’re not working three and four jobs like these women are just to pay the bills. So a couple things we learned today. Uh, Flava Flav’s clocks are waterproof. They’re shower clocks.
Jill: That was the best.
Alison: He has tried water polo. He said he treaded water with the girls for seven minutes and it was really hard, though he did score a goal on Ashley Johnson, though I think he felt like she may have let him.
Jill: Right, but they did say he did good and he looked actually like he didn’t do bad for the first time being in the water.
Alison: He wore the water polo cap to To the press conference. To the press conference. We have posted some pictures on our socials. We’ll put more in our Facebook group. I mean, it was amazing, and it’s amazing to see, and what a great partnership.
And they’re both lucky to have each other.
Jill: Exactly. And one of the other great bits about this press conference is we were sitting there, and the manager of the room came by, and there was equipment in the front row. We sat in the second row, and she says, Oh, is this your equipment? You know, this is for the officials of Mr.
Flavor Flav. And I was like, what?
Alison: That’s all you need to know that the officials of Mr. Flava Flav get the front row.
Jill: Exactly. All right, what volunteer or official job do we want to do today?
Alison: Well, originally I was going to say I want to be an official of Mr. Flava
Jill: Flav. Mmm.
Alison: But then we got through the opening ceremony and I am one of the, uh, team escorts on the boat.
Jill: That would be fun. That would be a really good job.
Alison: And I do want to mention that I did get to hang out with book club Claire today and she had a volunteer job that she voted for, which was she wants to be the umbrella holder for Teebok.
Jill: Also not, well, not a bad gig because you’d get on TV. Yes. Um, I would want to be.
There’s not many official jobs or volunteer jobs in the opening ceremony that I could tell. I mean, there were performer jobs, but there were wayfinders that had Paris 2024 foam fingers pointing in the right direction.
Alison: So they would literally just stand there and point you where you’re supposed to go?
Yes. Oh, that’s a job for you.
Jill: Yeah. They may not have known much. I will say that. But we’ll get to there. All right. The only way we are able to get to here in Paris is because listeners like you have supported us. We are an independent media outlet, which means the good thing is that we can give you the lowdown on everything in a way that no other outlet is able to do.
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Alison: You did
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All right opening ceremonies
Alison: I want to know how you got there because we all know security. There was an incident at the French train stations. We have not heard that much about it here, uh, in the press center, though I understand in, in the United States it is big news.
Jill: Yes. Several, uh, there were arson attacks at several train stations around here.
And, and that’s partial, it’s big news because it’s opening ceremony stays and, um, those seem to be attacks. It is also one of the days that all of France or all of Paris is heading out to vacation for the month. And, uh, that has disrupted many travel plans. So that’s a frustrating for a lot of people. And yeah, we, we don’t know a whole ton about it beyond that.
Alison: So from my perspective in the city, kind of wandering around, I mentioned this to you earlier. I did not have a moment where I did not hear. sirens. There was police everywhere. The city felt empty in many ways. People were, I mean, stores were open, restaurants were open. People were having events at those places.
But when I was walking around, it really felt like the city had cleared out. Now you had to deal with crazy security to just even get in. So let’s, let’s start there.
Jill: Okay, so we split up here. I continued to work for a little while. And I had to get myself to the opening ceremonies. Press were the, so the opening ceremonies along the Seine, and then there was the, uh, seated section in the Trocadero, which was where the official parts of the show took place.
The very end bits with the oath and, and, uh, the speeches and things like that. So those, those people got, um, seated places. If you were along the river, you got a standing place and they divvied those up kind of along the different sections. There were at least four sections of the river and you couldn’t go beyond your section.
I got put in section A,
Alison: the beginning,
Jill: the very beginning of the boat parade. And also anything that had smoke involved was right there for me. So I was in between the beginning bridge and then there was the next bridge. There was, I saw a little bit of the pink section of the show, but when it was actually, I saw a lot of dancers rehearsing right beforehand, but when it was actually showtime, those turned into women with flags during that number.
So I don’t quite know what happened there. Um, I had to get out of the Palais de Congress and we were allowed to take food in if you wanted to. So there’s a lovely little grocery store. Isn’t it wonderful? Yeah. And a cafe. So I went and got some snacks and, um, a sandwich and tried to get out of the building.
Our entrance was closed out, just locked down. And there was a whole security perimeter around our part of the entrance. We had to go out another door.
Alison: How far ahead of time was this from the show? Because the show started at seven 30.
Jill: Yes. And I probably left around three, maybe I would say two to three is probably when I got out of here
Alison: or didn’t get out of here.
Yeah,
Jill: well it, once you figured out how to get out, that was okay. I took the RER to, uh, get Douser leads, and it wasn’t a very long walk from there except for the fact that when. I got to, you know, I just kind of exited the train station and there was a mob of people right there and it turned out and I was walking in like, Oh, this must be whatever.
And I see the lines down there and I go to the lines and realize, Oh no, the line you turned. And it really starts back kind of really close to where I was. And this is a line that if, If you have seen the video from Beijing 2022 where I walked the line to get into the store that we were allowed to shop in, this was probably twice that.
And that line took like four minutes to walk down. This was really long and they had two metal detector gates and then like six tables set up to search bags for all these people. So, yeah.
Alison: And this was mixed. It wasn’t, that wasn’t press entrance. You were going through the, the standard entrance.
Jill: Let’s talk about no press entrance because there wasn’t one.
And I found some photographers. You always, you know, for us, we always, you find a photographer, you cling to them because they know what
Alison: they’re doing.
Jill: They know what they’re doing. They know how to talk to get into places and they got a lot of gear and they need to get to a spot and they need to get the spot early and we were trying to figure out where the media entrance was and there was no media entrance.
And there wasn’t a whole lot of media seating either, or, you know, there weren’t a lot of media allocation tickets. And there’s like 350, 000 people at this thing. So if you think about four or five sections of people, we’re getting 70, 000 people in my section, maybe. Something close to that, but there’s a lot of people around, and they’re trying to get all these people through with very minimal lines for them to get through in a few hours.
We go to a side gate, or you know, the barred entry, and Uh, there’s a manager there, a French manager of the area. And she was that stereotypical rude French person. Just know if, if you wanted to get in with no other people, you needed to be here by one. And we were like, what? And
Alison: we were told you couldn’t get in before three 30.
Jill: Yeah. Yeah. Basically. So she was really rude and said, no, you can’t get in. You have to go stand in line with everybody else. And then of course, that set me off. So I’m rude right back. And you know, she wasn’t listening to me. It’s one of the photographers, sweet talk. The two cops got us all in and they searched our bags real quick.
They looked at our IDs cause we had our passports with us along with our ticket and we got in. No problem. And I eventually ditched the photographers, but one of them went to one of the photo positions, which was on a boat. It was closed because they were only taking five people.
Alison: Wow.
Jill: I don’t know where she went.
I walked along between in our area and I ended up being on the boat. kind of in between the two bridges. I was maybe 150 meters away from the start of the pink stuff on where the pink stuff was on the wall, maybe 200 meters. And then same distance the other way. And could stand along the bridge.
You weren’t supposed, there were a couple of areas that were seated. You weren’t supposed to block those. The whole bridge was already full. walk, you know, right against the bridge rail. And there’s not a very wide walking path there. And I see people sitting and then, and then there is a like a terraced hill to go up to the top level of the, the walking area in this park along the Seine.
So I see people sitting along a ledge and then I see like there’s a second ledge. And I see a hole in the middle of some trees and I popped myself into that hole because one, it’s cloudy, it might rain, which it did a lot under the tree, I can kind of be under the tree, which didn’t really work because some other people kind of weaseled their way in and then a whole bunch of people were like, let’s peel back all these branches and tuck them in so we can see and still be up.
Um, a lot of people, finally security yelled. This took. Way into the ceremony. People got yelled at to get out of this terrace area, and I just kind of stayed there. But the rain did drive a whole bunch of people away. The other reason I wanted to be up there is because the walkway was starting to get three and four people deep, and so you could really only have one person walk down the entire area, and I thought if anything goes bad, This is going to be a bad scene and I wanted to be able to go up instead of having to be part of the mob.
So that was that. I’m like, this was not well thought out.
Alison: Well, we’ve been saying that for weeks, months probably, that this doesn’t seem to have been well thought out. What was thought out, I don’t know if we’re going to say well, but we’ll get there. Was the show itself.
Jill: Yes, the show itself. So if you, uh, have seen the French show Call My Agent or it’s called Dispersant here Fanny Herrero who wrote that show was part of the writing team for the opening ceremonies.
Alison: Are they on drugs?
Jill: Oh, I, that’s what I loved about it. Come on, it was raunch!
Alison: Okay, so we have both seen the media guide Uh, so ahead of the show, the, uh, media sent a guide describing what the show is going to be, giving us some information so that if you are, say, writing a report, doing television commentary, you’ve got some information.
This media guide was useless.
Jill: See, I have not yet seen it because it didn’t come out before I left and I couldn’t, I had no internet connection.
Alison: A lot of the media guide says, and you will see a unique element. but they don’t explain what it was. I was watching it on television with French commentary. You were watching it without commentary.
So probably there are listeners who saw it with Peyton Manning and Mike Tirico and Kelly Clarkson understand what was happening in the show way better than we do. The short version is there was a masked torchbearer, As in a callback to Assassin’s Creed. They actually reference Assassin’s Creed in the media guide.
And the Man in the Iron Mask and, uh, the Phantom of the Opera. I don’t know where he comes into all of this. I said he looks like Darth Maul, the Torchbearer.
Jill: Yeah, but I mean, I got it. When it was, when we opened up, uh, Zizou, what is his name? Didier Zizou?
Alison: No.
Jill: What is his name? Because I didn’t know who he was, but everybody around me went Zinedine
Alison: Zidane.
Jill: Whatever. Okay, Zinedine Zidane. Because it sounded like Zizou around me. Well, that’s his nickname. Okay, so everybody went nuts
Alison: at my event as well because he is One of the biggest stars of French sports ever.
Jill: Yes. And which I loved what he did here because it reminded me of the whole James Bond thing from London 12.
Agreed. And it was very fun and funny. Zizou has to get the torch, uh, to, I’m guessing he had to get the torch to the ceremony and he gets on the train and the train breaks down and there are some skateboarding kids and he hands the torch out the window and is like, get it to the ceremony for me.
Alison: And these children end up in a boat with this masked torchbearer.
And all I kept thinking was, why would you get on a boat with a stranger? But they were in the sewers and someone at the party pointed out, well, The torch, the master man gave them life jackets, so he must be safe.
Jill: I loved that. I actually really loved that bit. I thought there were just really funny elements in this whole bit.
Alison: So the important thing to know about the story is that the torchbearer, he takes you through, The, um, important landmarks that the, uh, opening ceremony travels through, takes you through several places in French history. They were trying to pre, pre, present Paris in not the typical rundown of French history.
That’s what Thomas, uh, Jolie had said. It was definitely not your typical rundown of French history.
Jill: No, and I actually really liked it. And I know I have to go watch it again because I didn’t see much of the show because I was watching the Parade of Nations.
Alison: And what was most different was the integration of the Parade of Nations with the show.
And what was happening on TV was different than you were experiencing. And one of the things that we’ve talked about in previous opening and closing ceremonies It’s an extremely different experience to be there in person and watch it on TV. And what this opening ceremony seemed to do was really make two different shows.
They produced a show that you saw, which was really focused on the parade of nations and the show that I saw on TV, which had. some really bizarre things happening, but also a lot of fun. And you know what I’m going to say, why I loved it until I didn’t, but we’ll get to that in a second. But I did love the good first hour of it because time and place, the only time and the only place you could have done the show is here and now France, Paris at this point in 2024.
So that was fantastic.
Jill: I would agree.
Alison: Big difference was the integration of the Parade of Nations, which I loved.
Jill: I did too. Oh my goodness. It made, I think it made the show go faster until it didn’t. Right?
Alison: Right. So if you feel like it was long on TV, at my watch party, about an hour and a half before the end, everybody had gotten restless.
Everyone was done.
Jill: Right. Because I think they didn’t do an, they did a lot of intercutting of entertainment sections and the storytelling aspect of the show. They did that very well in the beginning because they would bring out boats. And, and I was also where I was, was the beginning of the boat parade, the bridge that they first started coming under, under the arches, there was water being shot across.
You were telling me it was a water curtain. It
Alison: was described in the, uh, press information as a water curtain that then parts and allows the boats to come through.
Jill: Well, it also means that you don’t get to see what’s behind the curtain. And then that went away. And there was, I thought it was going to be two lanes of boats.
Alison: It was not.
Jill: No, it was water fountains. So it was like a big water fountain show or magic water, dancing water thing. And that we’re just so wowed by this right in front of us. The nations are coming out. Then. All of a sudden, that French tricolor smoke goes up on the first bridge, and we’re right there, and we’re like, Whoa!
This is amazing! This is so cool! It was fantastic. And then the boats come out. And they had, because you were telling me, oh, they’re not going to all come out from there. They’re going to come out from different places. But they did all come out from there. You just saw them in different places.
Alison: That’s right.
So the way they presented it in the press kit was during this section, these boats will be, will emerge. So it seemed like, The boats would come out in that section. No, that’s the time that that boat would be introduced. So for you, you were just seeing a, I got the whole parade, just one, two, three, four, five, six on television.
We would get a group of several boats and then we would get Lady Gaga who was fabulous. And then we would get a few more boats and then we’d get the pink can can dancers. Who needed more rehearsals
Jill: But it was interesting because there would be pauses in the boat parade for us But we really got all of the boats and I would be texting you. Okay, you got Jamaica, but I’m on You’re on the J’s, I’m on the N’s or whatever. It was something like that, where it was just, we were vastly apart in the alphabet.
And I thought that was fascinating how that worked.
Alison: So as we’re talking about this, we’re going to have to go back and forth because my notes are obviously in the order in which the show was done. So I do have a few uniform comments, even though it was pouring.
Jill: And
Alison: as the show went on, more and more teams were covered in plastic wrap, like, as Peggy Shin mentioned, made of the mist, if you’ve ever been to Niagara Falls, or as I refer to it, the Disney World ponchos.
But Angola started off with an absolute bang with the red dresses with the puffy sleeves.
Jill: See, and I couldn’t see much. I mean, I thought the rails really, being on the boat meant you couldn’t see the clothes very well. And I, what I really missed was seeing Hades.
Alison: Haiti looked extremely sharp. Loved that because basically they had this 1960s jacket that Haiti could wear and maybe Cuba and no other team could pull that off and make it appropriate.
Um, lots of ombre. Ombre was a theme, which we’ve seen in the run up. Um, did you notice Austria’s Alwiedersehen vests?
Jill: No, I couldn’t see them. They were smashed onto a boat with several other countries.
Alison: Check out the vests.
Jill: Okay.
Alison: I have to
Jill: go back and watch the entire show because there’s so much I miss.
Alison: Heinz and Heidi came to the Olympics. Bermuda leaned into the color scheme and had pink shorts.
Jill: Nice.
Alison: Um, Belgium ladies had a choice of either a gold or a red silky disco suit. Estonia went with double denim.
Jill: Wow. See, and I thought, oh, the U. S. uniform with the jeans on the bottom worked because you couldn’t see them.
That was great. I also thought the U. S. putting the flag bearers in white was fantastic. And having, you know, Libran, be the flying bearer was also great because he’s so huge.
Alison: When the, I mean that was toward the end of the ceremony, but when that boat came out, he was standing up in the front of the boat holding the flag aloft and It was like something out of Lord of the Rings.
If you’ve ever seen the image of the giant people that, um, the giant statues that open to the, uh, bay. And I apologize to Lord of the Rings people because I know I’m getting this wrong, but it was just this giant statue of a man holding that flag. That was impressive. Did you see Martin Foucault?
Jill: No.
Alison: He was with Michael Phelps.
He made an appearance.
Jill: Where was Michael Phelps? I don’t know. Were they on the screen? I didn’t see. I was watching both.
Alison: They were part of the LVMH Louis Vuitton luggage sequence.
Jill: Okay. So I did see that. Okay. Since you brought that up, one of two product placements in this show. And remember how they said in, in one of the press conferences we were in, or some kind of.
It was something where somebody asked, Hey, there’s not supposed to be advertisement on the field of play. And I said, well, no, it’s just a logo. And it was just a design. And not everybody knows what it is, but boy, did they show that logo.
Alison: That was in relation to the metal trays when those came out.
Jill: Yes, they were in this segment.
They were making the trays and they were making the big metal trunks that house the metals and carry them places. But they really showcased that logo. Um, That was one thing I was like, Ooh, not, not really cool to do.
Alison: But Mortan Forcad was there.
Jill: That’s cool. I will take that. I’ll have to go back and watch.
Alison: So then the masked torchbearer climbed on a whole bunch of buildings and ended up in the theater where Les Mis, Les Miserables is being performed. So we got some Les Mis.
Jill: I did hear that and I didn’t understand why.
Alison: Well, that’s why, because that’s where he ended up. Then he emerges from this building, ends up in another building.
And this is what I thought would be the wildest moment of the show was when you mixed the heavy metal band. I got the name, it’s Gojira with the opera singer, Marina Viotti, a whole bunch of headless mannequins, sort of dressed like Marie Antoinette. A whole bunch of red streamers that somebody in my room yelled, Is that supposed to be blood?
Performing Carmen as the opera singer is being pulled across the front of the building on like a cutout wooden boat.
Jill: Okay, because I caught glimpses of the heavy metal band in this castle like building and a lot of flames everywhere.
Alison: Yes. It was amazing.
I thought that was going to be the most bizarre moment, but actually the, there were so many more, but the next performance, the French in, in my crowd went nuts. So this was rapper Aya Nakamura, performed with the French army band in full uniform. And some of these army musicians were really getting into it.
You know, she’s, she was beautiful. She was soaking wet. They all were in these gorgeous Dior costumes. And here comes the army band and she’s this French Melanese rapper, you know, uh, like a Cardi B kind of style and gorgeous and, and fantastic. And here comes the French army band going, here we are. We know what we’re doing.
Wow. Wow. So then we got some more countries and that’s where Haiti came out. And all of a sudden, could you see the giant heads in the water?
Jill: I saw a head. It might have been on the screen, but there was, I could kind of see the beginning of the pink stuff. And I didn’t understand what was going on.
Alison: So we got a whole section of the story having to do with sisterhood, because they were talking about Egalité Fraternité.
Okay. But they also did a section on Sister Hoodetay. I just made that up. But it was the point being they wanted to highlight, just like they’ve talked so much about parody of men and women being equally represented, equally represented among the athletes. Let’s highlight the women of history, particularly French history.
So they started this section with enormous I don’t know if they were wooden or metal. I couldn’t tell on the screen. Heads floating in the water. So, I couldn’t even tell who some of these women were supposed to be, and they were not again identified in the press kit. But, so you just floated by this sort of Marie Antoinette looking giant paper doll style head.
Which did lead you to the section where the women’s statues came out of the pillars.
Jill: Wow.
Alison: That was wonderful. And that was all French women, uh, of distinction throughout history.
Jill: Okay. Because I couldn’t, I, I saw the pillars on the screen. I did not see them come out of the water. And then I saw, Little stuff.
I had no idea who these people were
Alison: and during that section more countries emerged one of them was India Which was Claire’s favorite Uniform the women had saris the men had neighbor jackets. Oh nice in really beautiful colors Then we sort of went into space The masked torchbearer jumped out a window and Sort of went flying through books Okay.
Okay. The best part was the little prince made an appearance. Did not see that. That was, that was amazing. People in my group loved that. And everybody sort of went, Oh, when he showed up. It’s, you know, the most beloved, I think, French children’s book.
Jill: I did see the section in the library where they’re people kind of eyeing each other.
And then I was back to boats. Yeah.
Alison: I kind of skipped over that. Um, yeah. So there were. Dancers in the library reading what can only be described as sexy books. Which, and I’m going to do this as PG as possible, that led to some sexy time among the dancers.
Jill: Okay, that’s what I was wondering was going to happen.
And
Alison: there was more than two in the room. Yeah, I wondered about that too. Yeah. Let’s move on to singing Marseillais because they sang the National Anthem and it Everybody sang the National Anthem around me. What a beautiful, beautiful moment. So, the woman is, and I apologize, I probably will get this wrong, Aixelle Saint Cyrille.
Her gown was by Dior. It was six panels over a corset bodice, of the French flag. So it looked like she was draped in the French flag. As she was holding the French flag, she looked like Marianne from the painting. She sounded, oh, it was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful emotional rendition. I got emotional and I’m not even French.
Jill: The only bit I didn’t like was that the boat parade is still going on in front of me. So while everyone is singing, we’re all still trying to clap for the athletes because, I mean, I did clap for every boat because I wanted to make sure they were out there, this is for them, I wanted them to be appreciated.
But, the Marseille was really cool.
Alison: Just awesome. What a way to do an anthem. Often they’re quite dry. You either get the children’s choir or the opera singer and this, they stuck around the top of a building with the flag and you were disappointed though that there was no naked, uh, flag bearer. Oh
Jill: yes, the Tongans.
Alison: That’s one, that’s the one I did notice. But I did want to point out, Go Back, Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu had, uh, both at least significantly partially naked flatbearers.
Jill: Oh, okay. I did not notice that because they were, I was trying to figure out who they were. And I had a little, um, a family behind me with a couple little boys and the dad was kind of calling out the countries.
And the country names, we didn’t have, uh, plaque bearers this time. Like, usually they have women, Or, you know, women in snow globe costumes in France, uh, with little saying who the country is, but no, they just slapped a sign on the boat. And it was generally in English. And then of course the order was French until you got to the, you know, start with Greece and then they had the refugee team after that, and then in French alphabet order, except for France’s at the end, then they had the next host, which is.
LA, so U. S., and then the next host before that, which is Australia for Brisbane. So that, those were the last three. And then, so of course, when you see, you’re in the T’s and all of a sudden you see Chad. It seems a little weird. I did notice that South Sudan was on a tiny little boat and South Sudan was in the next boat.
Alison: Yeah, let’s talk a bit about the size of boats. Actually, you know, let’s finish up with the uniforms, then we’re going to talk about size of boat. So a couple of more comments I want to make about the uniforms. Mozambique, the note I wrote to myself was let’s party like it’s 1989. Monaco understood the assignment and wore striped shirts and berets.
and overall, the most prevalent item in this parade was the plastic poncho.
Jill: We
Alison: lost a lot of beautiful outfits from plastic ponchos. Poor France though.
Jill: I didn’t notice that they were in plastic ponchos and I was trying to look for what the women look like and I couldn’t tell. They looked soaking
Alison: wet is what they look like.
The uniforms not made for rain by any stretch of the imagination. Those guys were soaked completely through. And that was when we first saw them. So that was maybe halfway through the Uh, they were probably about halfway down the river by the time, maybe two thirds drenched.
Jill: It was, it rained a lot. First, it wasn’t raining.
Then it started raining a little bit and stopped. Then it just rained. Not, not cats and dogs rain, but it rained pretty heavily and steadily and everybody got wet. There were umbrellas up everywhere. So that made it a little difficult to, uh, try to maneuver around. And, I, before I forget, I think I said Jackie Simenow.
Alison: Yes. Jackie Simenow was right on the railing. So yes, she did. She did show up on, on camera as did my fencers. And I did wave at them.
Jill: Well, the U S boat was big and packed. It was incredible. And I will say that there was, everything was towards our side of the river bank, but there were watch parties on the far side of the riverbank.
So they had nothing that it was kind of like here, come and watch and be right there. But you can’t see anything because everybody is facing our direction. It was that, that I thought was interesting.
Alison: So there were many different sized boats and there were, many configurations. So obviously USA and France had their own boats, very large boats.
Uh, some other countries had their own boats that were like dinghies and we were quite concerned. Um, I thought we were going to lose St. Lucia. Just those boats look like they were bouncing around.
Jill: Could have been. I mean, the, the river was going to go. I, that river is going to be. We’re going to hear stories about contamination, I’m sure, and the river is going to be flowing fast.
Alison: I was also very concerned about American Samoa because they packed into the front of their boat, they were supposed to be at the top, so their flag bearer was at the top. And maybe two or three other people. And then the rest of the team had all settled in sort of the front prow of the boat. And they were having a fantastic time.
I have no doubt that the American Samoan rugby players were involved in this little shenanigan. But I was also concerned about that boat going nose down into the water because they had clearly settled. You also may have noticed that. Boats were not evenly just distributed in terms of the number of people.
And it seemed like, for example, Ireland, there was nobody on that boat. That team is much bigger than what was there. GB, same thing. So I don’t know if there was last minute changes because of the weather. A lot of athletes decided not to participate, or if organizers and, uh, NOCs didn’t communicate as to who was expected on the boat.
Jill: I bet there was some element of, will you be marching in the opening ceremony? Yes or no? Because there are so many athletes who do not do that because they compete right away. It was a long day for me. I’m not, and, and they weren’t, I thought it would be like, hey, we’re on a boat and we can sit down. No, they were all standing the entire time.
And in these boats, it was stand on the top for the most part. And there was, uh, like a cafeteria or dining room on the bottom of the boat. Nobody was down in the dining room. I don’t think
Alison: they were allowed to be.
Jill: So if you were tired, it’s tough. So
Alison: many countries shared boats. Um, and. There were some strange combinations there and it didn’t seem like they were permitted.
The athletes were permitted to interact. They had to keep their countries separate. You know, that’s an opening ceremony tradition. yeah, there was a few countries that I thought we were going to lose in the sun. I was very concerned, but all in all, I think the athletes really enjoyed the boat parade despite the rain.
It seemed like they were able to, because they didn’t have to focus on walking. They could focus on the crowd and interacting with the people on the riverbank and they were close enough to you that they could wave and cheer and, and get that response. So I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like this again.
Jill: No, I don’t. I do not think this will happen again. It was remarkably cool. As I texted you, this is so incredibly cool. The dancing waters were out for quite some time and then they went away. And then for us and France, they came back and France got them lit. There was also a segment where there was a fighter jets doing a heart in the air.
Alison: We could kind of see that on television. I, but not, it wasn’t great.
Jill: The heart was really big, so I don’t think it makes a good picture for anybody, unless you’re a really good photographer and can get wide angle that pretty good. Um, but that was kind of cool and kind of came out of nowhere. We didn’t know what was happening.
I do have to ask, where did the minions come in? And why wasn’t that the Friege?
Alison: So, A part of the story with the Masked Torchbearer is that he arrives at the Louvre and the Mona Lisa has been stolen. And it turns out that the Minions have stolen the Mona Lisa.
Jill: Why them and why not a group of Frieges?
Alison: I really don’t know. Cause
Jill: I looked at that one like, why is the Minion here? Because they have nothing to do with the, well, they have,
Alison: maybe minions are very popular
Jill: here. I don’t know. We’ve seen the, one of the minion movies is out.
Alison: I’m sure it was a deal with the, the company.
Jill: Yeah, I know. But that made me, I didn’t like that because again, that felt like blatant product placement.
And I really thought that if you’re going to do a segment like this, the freezes need to be involved and you’ve animated those freezes.
Alison: So there was no freeze activity in the show.
Jill: No, until it was time to say goodbye and maybe there was a hello to us,
Alison: but not really,
Jill: no, but there was nothing. It was, that was really weird.
But yeah, you know, sometimes you have them in. Sometimes you don’t.
Alison: Okay. So a few questions. I do want to Mention. And then we’ll get to the next section. Um, I don’t understand why there was a blue man laying on a platter surrounded by fruit.
Jill: That was one of those I looked up and went, I saw the platter, the close rise and I went, okay, I don’t know what this is.
And then the man showed up, got up and I really didn’t know what was going on.
Alison: I didn’t understand why there was a punk Charles DeGaulle. Doing BMX tricks?
Jill: What? No, I knew the BMX tricks were happening because we saw a ramp and then there were two more the next day when I went to archery. I saw more.
Alison: Yeah, well those BMX riders were dressed in white costumes as figures in French history.
One of which was Charles de Gaulle. Alright. we did have to tolerate, imagine that the version was beautiful but Why was the piano on fire?
Jill: Okay, I didn’t. When that started, I went, Oh, here we go. But it was a lovely singer. It was a really good version. I didn’t understand why the piano was on fire. I also was like, is she standing on a burning pile of garbage?
Alison: Yes. And she was kind of floating away. I thought it was going to be my Algeria situation. We were going to lose the Imagine singer.
Jill: But I didn’t get I mean, I got why we did Imagine. It’s just like, Oh, here we go again. But it was really, really, it didn’t. me as much as other imagines. The burning garbage pile thing that she was on float, that did.
Alison: Overall, way too much dancing, way too much fashion show. We could have cut out an hour or two and not lost any of the impact. What they did was good until it wasn’t.
Jill: Yeah. I thought there was way too much fashion show too. And then I realized, They need to get all those athletes out of the boats. Cause they were all supposed to be in the Trocadero, which I couldn’t quite tell if they were, but they had to get the athletes out of the boat and they were killing time to make that happen.
Alison: So then we finally get to the meat in a way of the, we get to the Trocadero.
Jill: Oh, wait, while we’re killing time, they do have a film that was Olympics moments throughout history.
Alison: They did it by decade. And while they were doing this, There was a, a woman riding a metal horse on the river for a very long time.
Jill: Because what happened was all of a sudden an OBS boat goes by me to the end of the, the line to the beginning of the parade. And that curtain comes back on and I went, Ooh, something’s coming out of there. And it was the horse. The horse went the entire parade route. Yeah, and I didn’t know what the horse was.
It was cool that we got to see something else because by now the parade had been over for a long time and we were getting nothing.
Alison: And then they transitioned to an actual horse on the bridge.
Jill: Which I
Alison: thought was cool. Who brought the flag. No one carried the Olympic flag.
Jill: I loved that.
Alison: There were no former athletes, dignitaries.
It was A different masked person, and boy did she carry that flag for a long time.
Jill: That was weird, but, and I agree with you, that was long, and the horse riding down the river was also very, very long, because once I realized what was going on and that she was going to do the whole parade route, I’m like, wow, that’s, that’s six, that’s ten kilometers there.
It’s a long time to be doing a parade. But I loved the, I really loved the fact that. She was caped in the Olympic flag and then just had one folded up and handed it over to the, uh, armed forces people who put it on the flagpole.
Alison: Beautiful rendition of the Olympic, uh, hymn.
Jill: Poor, they were getting soaked.
Alison: Wow. Those, those performers today really were put through it. And did an amazing job and had to perform under some not necessarily great conditions. If you’ve got to dance in the rain, that ain’t easy. And sing in the rain, that’s a strain on your body. And boy, did they pull it off.
Then we get
Jill: Speeches? Speeches. Oh, speeches were long. I will say the one interesting thing was that they had a sign language interpreter. At least on the screens that I saw.
Alison: Not on my French screen.
Jill: Oh, that’s interesting. But we had in, in the venue, we had, they had it on the screen and they also had, uh, subtitles in English and in French.
So that was kind of nice. Uh, Tony Escande, Tony Escan, Stan Gay. Wow.
Alison: He looks really happy though.
Jill: Oh, he, he did look happy. And, uh, he had a very nice speech, you know, it, and part of it was like, I’m, I’m one of you and I know what it took to get here. Congratulations. And you could really tell he meant that.
Then Teebok spoke for, he spoke for a long time. He, is
Alison: he, you know what, we’ll have to go back to our own opinions if we think he always goes on and on and on because he always kind of says the same thing.
Jill: Oh yeah.
Alison: Get a new speechwriter, Teebok?
Jill: And then, uh, President Macron opened the ceremony. And he was
Alison: prompt.
Jill: They are always prompt. They only have like two lines to say. And then we had the, the light show, torch, light show, and Selene.
Alison: Yes, so first, uh, Zinadine Zidane came back, bringing the torch in. And, and the masked torchbearer just sort of appears, hands him the torch, and then disappears.
He really served no purpose in this entire story.
Jill: See, I thought that was the, the original kids. But I guess I missed it when they got into the boat and they gave the torch to the Masked Torchbearer, right?
Alison: Correct.
Jill: Well then the Masked Torchbearer brought it back like he was supposed to.
Alison: So I guess he’s a good guy?
Jill: Yeah, he just thought it wouldn’t full circle.
Alison: So then you have this very odd decision after you have brought the torch all the way to the Trocadero. Now we’re going to bring the torch all the way back to the Louvre and eventually the Jewelries, which we’ll get to.
Jill: But how far is that, do you think? What?
That’s not a short
Alison: distance. I mean it took, so they did the light show for a very long time because they were power boating the torch back to the Louvre. Though in the boat we had Raphael Nadal, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, and Nadia Comaneci as sort of this.
Jill: Carl Lewis and Nadia, because I couldn’t see everybody who was in the boat and I was like, Is that Serena?
Cause she was on the red carpet. Serena
Alison: was in the boat. Raphael was in the boat. And let me tell you something. The French crowd at my event loved when Raphael Nadal showed up.
Jill: Oh, good.
Alison: Yeah. I was surprised by that. Oh,
Jill: speaking of the Argentina boat, when it got announced, got booed.
Alison: So they’re not letting this go.
Jill: Not when they showed up in front of us, but they did. There were people around me that did boo the boat. Ukraine. Everyone went crazy.
Alison: Nice to hear. What was the reception for Israel?
Jill: Not much of one, but people cheered for Palestine.
Alison: Okay, fine, fine.
Jill: So, there was that, and uh, when Ukraine went on the screen, people cheered again in my section.
Alison: Wow. Did you feel like there was a crowd in that last section with the torch? Like it was way too many torchbearers at the end there.
Jill: Like they couldn’t decide. And because some people ran like five steps and had to hand it off. And then the first tennis player, whose name I did not catch, she ran so long and then I thought, oh, she gets to hand it off.
And then she kept running. She
Alison: joined up with Tony Parker and they just kept going. The one I want to point out is the man who was, Second to last who handed it off to the final two. His name is Charles Costa. He was the man in the wheelchair. He is the oldest living French Olympic champion. He’s 100 years old.
Born in 1924. He won a gold in cycling in 1948.
Jill: Let’s go back to the distance.
Alison: How long it takes?
Jill: From the Trocadero to the Louvre. It’s 3. 8 kilometers. Yeah. There was
Alison: no joke getting it back there. So you had this light show that just went on and on and on. And what was funny was in the watch party, everyone took out their phones.
Nope. Cause the light show on TV is not terribly impressive. And it just went on for too long.
Jill: squigglies running through the tower. And then they eventually formed the Olympic rings.
Alison: And then they also shot. Laser beams out of its eyes. Mm-Hmm. eyes like it was death raise
Jill: and it, I had to watch it on TV too
because I couldn’t see anything, and I wondered if it wasn’t so gray and cloudy. I may have seen some residual light, but it was around a bend, so it wasn’t really, it wasn’t visible. So it was cool looking. But yes, that one it just went on. It, it,
Alison: yeah, that last hour and a half really dragged. So then we finally get to the final two of torch bearers who go to light the cauldron.
Marie José Parekh and Teddy Reiner. You had, you had called Teddy Reiner.
Jill: Maybe, and some other people had said Teddy Reiner to me. Today, I got some, I think it’s gonna be Teddy Reiner. So huge, he’s a huge judo star here. He’s won some medals.
Alison: I think in our conversation with our friend David, In, uh, the interview, you said Teddy Reiner, so good on ya!
Jill: I’ll take it.
Alison: And then we get to the cauldron. First of all, it is a cauldron. At least.
Jill: I did, I saw it and went, here we go, we got something now. And it was huge looking.
Alison: I didn’t know which part of that was gonna burn.
Jill: I couldn’t tell what it was. It’s a hot
Alison: air balloon.
Jill: Yeah, I know, and I still can’t tell what it was.
Alison: So, it is a hot air balloon, which were invented in France. first flown over Paris. It lit and it lifted. And we thought the cauldron was going to fly away. We were quite concerned. I wasn’t sure if it was attached, but supposedly it is hovering above the Tuileries and we’ll get there and give you a sense of how, because it on TV, it looks enormous.
It does look a bit like a binky.
Jill: Okay.
Alison: A fire binky. I don’t know what kind of child would get given a fire binky, but the white blob on top is concerning, but given the snow flame, I am reticent to complain.
Jill: That’s true. I went, well, we’re back to a cauldron. That’s a good thing. So we’ll go and find it. And then we had another very, very long light show.
Because we had no fireworks.
Alison: Sustainability.
Jill: That’s what I figured. And I understand. But as somebody who had stood for hours and hours, I wanted a little thing that I could see, too. Oh, you
Alison: couldn’t see the fire show. You couldn’t see any of the light
Jill: show. So we’re standing there and we’re watching it on TV, basically.
And we’re, we’re wet. And it’s miserable. It’s miserable. And luckily people have just given up at this point. Once the boat parade got done, a lot of people just took off, which was great because it wasn’t that hard to get out of there. And it wasn’t that hard to get you weren’t,
Alison: you weren’t trapped in the foliage.
No.
Jill: Because I did try to go up. Well, some cops had started yelling at us to get off of that area. And some people had climbed. There was a little, like, lookout point, I guess. It was something behind us that was a structure that people were hanging out on. People were hanging out behind a metal rack, or metal barrier.
And, uh, the security got angry about that. So, and I think he yelled at me to get off my little ledge. I don’t know. I wasn’t moving. I did move down when some other people moved out, but I wasn’t moving because, and then I tried to go up and it was just too muddy. It was so slippery. It’s like, oh, this won’t be good.
Alison: Well, we’ve got a cauldron. It’s lit.
Jill: Let the games begin.
Alison: We got a lot of stuff going on in the next few days.
Jill: I like that. That we do. So, uh, Shook Fustan Watch. Tomorrow, we have, uh, Brody Malone begins qualification in men’s gymnastics.
Alison: Baywan John starts women’s badminton pool play. Evvie
Jill: Leepfarth and Luca Jones race in Canoe Slalom C1 heats.
Alison: USA Fencing begins competition with Women’s Epee and Men’s Sabre.
Jill: Christy Wagner starts rowing Double Skull heats.
Alison: Perry Baker and Team USA Rugby play Ireland in their placement round.
Jill: And Ashley Johnson, Maggie Steffens, Team USA and Flava Flav. Well, the team begins preliminary play in Women’s Water Polo.
Flav begins hype in Women’s Water Polo. And, uh, if you get our newsletter, you will find out where we will be tomorrow as well. So that is going to do it for this episode. Let us know what you thought of the Opening Ceremonies. I know ListenerBritney and, and a couple other people were going to IMAX, so it sounded like that was a decent way to watch it, even though nobody went to see the IMAX, so I bet we may not get to see that again if they don’t feel like that was a good enough, uh, draw.
But I would love to know what you thought of this. I gotta watch it again at some point.
Alison: Agreed. And you can let us know on X, YouTube and Instagram at flamealivepod. You can send us an email at flamealivepod at gmail. com. Call or text us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8 flame it chat with us and other fans on our Facebook group.
Keep the flame alive podcast. And if you want to know what we’re up to tomorrow, you can get our special daily gains time newsletter at our website. FlameAlivePod. com.
Jill: Join us again for tomorrow for more action from Paris. Please do not forget to tell your friends about this show. Hang out with us in the Facebook group because it is rocking there.
Please send some baguette money because I did bring a baguette and it got soaked tonight. So I had no baguette. But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening and until tomorrow, keep the flame alive.