When the Paris Olympics opening ceremony begins on Friday night, it will be the first time the theatrical curtain-raiser for the world's biggest sporting event has taken place outside a stadium... Instead of the traditional parade round a stadium track, more than 8,000 of the world's top athletes will be transported by boat along 6km of the River Seine... dancers, pop stars, tightrope walkers, and acrobats will perform daring feats on water, rooftops, bridges, and artificial islands... helicopter and possibly even submarines, before a vast laser show finale is beamed from the Eiffel Tower.
More than 1 billion people are expected to watch live on TV and social media. The idea of performing a show of this magnitude along a large stretch of river in a city under its highest terrorism alert was so outrageous that even Emmanuel Macron at first thought it was a crazy and not very serious idea. But this week at the Elysee, the French president said: 'We decided it was the right moment to deliver this crazy idea and make it real.'
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