The 2024 Summer Olympics kick off in Paris for opening ceremonies
The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris begin with opening ceremonies on July 26, 2024, and will run through August 11, 2024, with closing ceremonies.
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Singing atop the Eiffel Tower, Céline Dion performed Edith Piaf's "Hymne à l'amour" to close out the opening ceremony. It was her first live performance since announcing her ongoing battle with stiff-person syndrome.
Dion was diagnosed with SPS in late 2022, causing her to postpone a tour. It is described by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as a rare and progressive neurological disorder which causes rigid muscles and painful muscle spasms.
The beloved singer has opened up in the past about how the condition has affected her ability to sing and walk.
Onlookers, including Kelly Clarkson on NBC’s broadcast, were left speechless and brought to tears by the Olympic performance.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The 2024 Paris Olympics have officially begun after the Olympic cauldron was lit by a pair of French Olympians, three-time Olympic Judo gold medalist Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in track and field.
About 10,000 people were chosen to carry the flame across France from the southern city port of Marseille, where it arrived on May 8, to the opening ceremony on July 26.
In the final leg of the relay, tennis greats Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams were among the group of athletes that took the torch by boat back up the Seine River where French tennis legend Amélie Mauresmo would take over and run it through the streets of Paris to the Louvre.
Several other French athletes, including the oldest living French Olympian Charles Coste, got a chance to pass the torch before the cauldron - a hot air balloon - was lit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach officially welcomed the more than 6,800 athletes that participated in the opening ceremony on Friday night with a strong message about “solidarity.”
“You have come to Paris as athletes, now you are Olympians. Stepping into the Olympic village like generations of athletes before you: now I’m part of something bigger than myself. Now we all are part of an event that unites the world,” he said.
“As olympians we care for each other. We not only respect each other, we live in solidarity with each other.”
“In a world torn apart by wars and conflicts, it is thanks to this solidarity that we can all come together tonight."
There are 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participating in the Paris Olympics.
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The face of U.S. men's track and field is reminding everyone that that is still the case.
Noah Lyles is the overwhelming favorite to win the 200-meter race at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris (he's even going for the world record), and he's very likely to medal in the 100-meter, as well.
The 27-year-old Gainesville, Florida, native has yet to bring home Olympic gold (he earned bronze in the 200-meter in 2021), but he tore it up in the world championships recently to make himself a force to be reckoned with.
Lyles has taken home six golds in worlds, including three last year in Budapest (100-meter, 200-meter and 4x100-meter relay). Understandably, he's confident in what he can do in Paris.
So, prior to heading out on Team USA's boat for the opening ceremony, he put one word on his fingernails: "ICON."
This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News' Ryan Morik.
Seeing sports as unifying is not a new concept.
Earlier this week, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach spoke to an audience that included French President Emmanuel Macron and other officials, addressing the importance of promoting "Olympic values" during a period of overwhelming global conflict. He later met with hundreds of Olympic athletes in the Olympic Village to share a message, "Give peace a chance."
"When our founder, Pierre de Coubertin, revived the Olympic Games 130 years ago — right here in Paris — he saw it as a way to promote peace among all nations and people of the world. He was a true ambassador for peace. Today, you — the Olympic athletes — you are the peace ambassadors of our time," Bach said.
It's a sentiment two-time Olympic gold medalist Ryan Crouser shares.
"It's been a long time since we, as the world, have kind of had a proper Olympics," Crouser told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday.
This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News Paulina Dedaj.
Olympic gold medal pole vaulter Katie Moon shouted out her home state of Ohio on social media in a selfie with NBA great LeBron James.
James, also an Ohio native and Cleveland Cavaliers legend, was selected alongside rising tennis star Coco Gauff to be the flag bearers for Team USA.
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Olympic organizers were expecting unpleasant weather for the opening ceremony on Friday, but the constant rain didn’t appear to dampen the mood for the roughly 6,800 athletes participating in the Parade of Nations.
An intermittent drizzle cleared up before the parade began, but as the boats made their way down the Seine River, it picked back up again.
Comfortable temperatures in the upper 60s are more than enough to keep spirits high.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Breaking, more commonly known as breakdancing, can be traced back to the Bronx, New York, during the 1970’s.
Breaking is a part of hip-hop culture which is shown through a combination of dance moves, spins, flips, and other techniques. The term “breaking” comes from the instrumental breaks in song that are usually accompanied by beats.
The 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires was the event to put Breaking on the map, and it is now in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The athletes are called “B-Boys” and “B-Girls” and the matches are called “battles.”
The inaugural Olympic competition will take place on Aug. 9-10.
Thirty-two athletes qualified for the event. As the host country France was offered two host quotas (one per gender) while four universality places (two per gender) were on offer.
To be eligible for a universality place the athlete must have competed in the Olympic Qualifying Series (OQS) and placed in the top 24.
The other 26 athletes qualified through their performances in last year’s world championships, the respective continental Games (Africa, Asia, Europe, Pan Am, and Oceania) and the OQS held in Shanghai and Budapest in May and June, respectively.
The scoring is made up of five categories: musicality, vocabulary, originality, technique, and execution. Each category makes up 20% of the judge’s score.
The battles are best-of-three, and each athlete has 60 seconds to complete their routine. Athletes can be penalized for misbehavior at the judge’s discretion.
Each day starts with a round-robin phase consisting of four groups of four. The top two in each group advance to the quarterfinals followed by the semi-finals and into the final battle for medals.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
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A heavy metal-opera mash up featuring the French band, Gojira, and opera singer Marina Viotti received mixed reviews on social media after the opening ceremony performance included a headless woman dressed in red, symbolizing Marie Antoinette.
Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the opening ceremony, said the inspiration behind all performances was to reinterpret the way the world sees France.
“The extraordinary thing is that everyone in France and the rest of the world has an idea of what France is all about. And I want to play with that, that's where I want to start from - breaking down clichés, because clichés come along other things,” he said, according to the Olympics website.
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Simone Biles will not be present at the opening ceremony in order to “rest up” for Sunday’s qualifying events, her family revealed during an interview with NBC.
Biles, 27, is the most decorated gymnast of all time. She has four Olympic gold medals, one silver and two bronze.
More than 10,000 of the world’s best athletes set sail in nearly 100 boats on the Seine River on Friday evening. The 3.7 mile parade route highlights some of Paris’ most iconic landmarks.
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Greece led the Parade of Nations for the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday, which has been a tradition held since 1928. The tradition is a nod to the birthplace of the Olympics.
The Hellenic Olympic Committee has 101 athletes in its delegation, including NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
AP Photo/Michel Euler
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo went for a swim in the Seine River on Wednesday, fulfilling her promise to show the river was clean enough ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games.
Since 2015, organizers have spent $1.5 billion trying to clean up the Seine River before the Olympics.
People were banned from swimming in the river for over a century due to concerns about the rivers flow and pollution. Even as recent as early June tests done by the monitoring group Eau de Paris indicated unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria until recent improvements.
After taking a dip, Hidalgo called today “a dream” and a “testimony that we have achieved a lot of work.”
Cleaning up the Seine River has been a longtime goal for the French. Former French President Jacques Chirac vowed to clean up the river back in 1988 when he was the Paris Mayor but to no avail.
Hidalgo was initially supposed to swim the Seine River in June, but it had to be delayed due to snap parliamentary elections in France.
When the date was announced of Hidalgo’s swim, the French people got “I’m pooping in the Seine” trending online to protest the Olympic games by defecating upstream before the mayor’s swim.
Despite the threat, today’s event went without incident as numerous city officials and athletes invited to swim were throwing a ball around in the water and having fun.
The Seine River will be featured during the opening ceremony and will be the host of several open water swimming events during the Olympic Games including marathon and swimming and swimming legs of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
AP Photo/Mark Terrill
Team USA has two flag bearers: LeBron James (basketball) and Coco Gauff (tennis).
For the American side, team captains and fellow players normally choose flag bearers.
The Paris Games will be James’ fourth Olympics. The NBA legend made his Olympics debut in 2004. The 39-year-old helped team USA win gold in 2008 and 2012, and was named the 2012 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year.
When he steps on the court for his first game, he will join Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant as the only three players to ever play in four Olympics for Team USA men’s basketball.
Gauff is only 20 years old and is a rising star in the tennis world.
The U.S. Committee selected Gauff to play alongside Jessica Pegula in the 2020 Tokyo Games but she had to pull out after testing positive for COVID-19. The Paris 2024 Olympics will be Gauff’s Olympic debut.
Gauff won her first grand slam title when she won the U.S. Open in 2023.
Sue Bird (women’s basketball) was the flag bearer for Team USA in the Tokyo 2020 Games.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
U.S. swimmer Regan Smith is an Olympic medalist, a world record holder, a world champion and even an adoring cat owner. But the 22-year-old former Stanford swimmer might best describe herself as a proud American.
Smith qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris after her dominating performance in the women’s 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke and the 200-meter fly at the recent U.S. Olympic Swimming Team Trials in Indianapolis. She set the world record in the 100-meter.
She described it as a "gratifying" experience, one that has again given her the chance to wear a swim cap with the American flag alongside her name.
Ahead of her second appearance in the Summer Olympics, Smith told Fox News Digital that she first got the opportunity to represent the U.S. when she was 15.
"It almost moved me to tears," she said.
In Smith’s retelling of this moment, she didn’t make mention of medals or records, just the pride she felt.
This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News Paulina Dedaj.
AP Photo/David Goldman
Even though some of the Games began on Wednesday, the Opening Ceremony will take place on Friday, July 26, at 1:30 p.m. ET.
For the first time in Olympic history, the ceremony will not take place or lead into a stadium. The opening ceremony will be a boating parade through the recently cleaned Seine River. Since 2015 organizers have spent $1.5 billion to clean up the river before the Olympics began.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo recently swam in the river to prove that the Seine River was once again safe to swim in again after people were banned from doing do due to health concerns.
The parade will run about 3.7 miles, taking the 10,500 athletes participating in the games through the center of Paris. The parade route will conclude in front of the Trocadéro, where the rest of the Olympic protocol and final shows will take place.
The Opening Ceremony will be the largest attended in the history of the games, as residents of Paris along with tourists from around the world can go along the river and watch.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
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Katie Ledecky, 27, is already one of swimming’s all-time greats.
With her seven Olympic gold medals and 21 World Championship titles, Ledecky holds the most medals of any women’s swimmer in history. The Maryland native won her first gold medal at age 15 in the 2012 London Olympic Games defeating reigning world champion Kate Ziegler in the 800m freestyle.
In the 2016 Rio Olympic Games her success in the 200m, 400m, and 800m, saw her claim the most individual titles in the pool. She also set new records in the 400m and 800m that year.
Ledecky is also the most decorated woman in World Championship history. She is the only swimmer to win five consecutive world titles in an individual event, the 800m freestyle. No one has beaten Ledecky in the 800m freestyle in over a decade. She has been honored with the USA Swimming Golden Goggles Award for Female Swimmer of the Year seven times.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos contributed to this report.
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