Olympics Diary: Choking security, rains play dampener at opening ceremony

A sporting extravaganza of the magnitude of Olympics always has it’s teething problems – and Paris seems to be no exception. The choking leash of security, which left a lot of members of the visiting media exasperated as they tried to make their way to the Main Press Centre to catch buses for the opening ceremony – are now worried as to what’s in store for them in the next two weeks.

The sabotage attack on the SNCF rail network, which left hundred of thousands of passengers stranded around the country and transport in Paris buckling, has surely not done much to calm the nerves of the Emmanuel Macron government.

It’s a no brainer that the president would try to showcase France at its best to the world in the wake of an inconclusive election and an unfavourable rating, and hence there would be a silent prayer on everyone’s lips that the Games should pass off without a hitch.

Reports in the Indian media surfaced that how a posse of journalists, travelling from their hotel to the media centre, had to ‘suffer’ in the metro with police boarding in every third station to conduct checks.

‘’Every third station, the metro was being stopped with cops getting on to conduct checks. Randomly, passengers were asked to show an ID and even the media weren’t spared. Interestingly, accreditations weren’t deemed enough, and we were asked to show our passports before we could travel,’’ Boria Majumder of RevSportz wrote on his Facebook wall.

The obsession with security is seen as a reflection of the geopolitical crisis around the world. If Macron had been facing an erosion of popularity in recent times, the protests over the presence of Russian and Israeli athletes in the competitions have also bubbled up in recent days. The experience of at last three Games, according to visitors, shows that even London 2012 had it’s own security challenges but it was no near as suffocating as Paris.

Parisian security and infra structure has been comprehensively overhauled, with the installation of facial-recognition cameras, building projects which have displaced many poorer residents and the destruction of community gardens in poor neighbourhoods to make room for Olympic projects.

Interestingly, the innovative and spectacular opening ceremony on River Seine on Friday – which had rains threatening to play spoilsport - also has had it’s share of detractors. The British media had, by and large, panned it while the netizens questioned the wisdom of some of the acts like the recreation of  The Last Supper by drag artistes, the beheading of Mary Antoinette and Philippe Katerine’s depiction of Dionosys, the Goddess of Wine.

This prompted one user to write: ‘’They are literally mocking The Last Supper, and majority of France are followers of Christ.’’

‘’Is this the worst-ever opening ceremony of an Olympic Games? Absolute garbage to deliver to a global audience,’’ wrote Alan Wilkins, the well known cricket presenter on his X. The jury is still out on what was touted as the biggest opening ceremony yet but fortunately, all the sporting action is at hand to offer distraction.