The Paris Olympics Could Have the Most Spectacular Boat Parade in History

The opening ceremony of the Olympics promises to be the most magnificent boat parade in history. More than 150 vessels are scheduled to cruise the Seine for the grandiose opening ceremony on the Paris’s main river. Ranging from tourist vessels that carry hundreds to smaller 25-foot runabouts, the boats will transport 10,000 athletes from Pont d’Austerlitz, upstream on the Seine, 3.5 miles to Pont de Iéna. About 350,000 spectators will be in stands constructed on the banks, while another 150,000 will watch from land.

“The great river parade will be the highlight of the opening ceremony,” says Thierry Reboul, the Olympic Committee’s director of festivities, following a practice session in late June. An expert in outdoor events, Reboul conceived the idea of a waterside extravaganza six years ago and has been working since to coordinate both security and showmanship to what is effectively a miles-long, open-air arena.

About 10 days before the opening ceremony, the logistics are in place. Now, the organizers are waiting for the fast-running Seine to slow down.

If everything goes to plan, this will be the first time in the Summer Games’s history that the opening event is not in a stadium, which means 10 times as many spectators can witness the event. The Olympic Committee estimates that more than a billion people will see Paris at its best. With a 7:30 p.m. start time, the boat parade will pass the Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame, the Pont-Neuf, the Louvre Palace, the French Academy, the Grand Palais, and National Assembly, with sound and light shows along the route, arriving at Pont de Iéna for a dramatic sunset.

“The biggest difficulty will be the timing,” says Reboul about the long procession of boats. The vessels have to complete the course in 45 minutes, meaning captains will need to run at a precise six mph, while keeping a distance of about 330 feet from the boat in front of them.

A dress rehearsal that brought together 55 boats on June 17 was relatively successful, though the organizers have planned another tomorrow to ensure better coordination and choreography within the fleet.

The 80 bateaux mouches—as the Parisian passenger boats are known—are a mixed bag of vessels with lengths ranging from 33 to 200 feet. The largest vessels, with 600 outdoor seats, will be able to transport four or five national athlete teams. The organizers are also counting on 100-plus smaller boats to transport other delegations.

Bruno Gambier, a bateaux mouche captain since 1986, took part in the June rehearsals. He has few worries about the event running smoothly. “The only slight difficulty,” he tells Robb Report, “is to sail at the same tempo with other boats that sometimes have very different lengths. The rest of it is routine.”

Maybe. The organizers continue to monitor the river, which is running too fast. The French Ministry of Sport has set an acceptable flow rate of 450 cubic meters/second for the parade. A normal flow rate is 100 to 150 cubic m/second in the summer. But because of unusually rainy weather in May and June, the most recent flow rate is closer to 670 m/second.

Reboul told Agence France-Presse that with current conditions the boats will no longer be able run at 5.5 mph, but would be pushed along at 7.4 mph. That extra two mph could “pose problems for speed and maneuverability,” he said.

But authorities are still planning to go ahead with the procession. Robust security details have been organized, including 50 boats from the Paris river brigade, as well as 45,000 officers along the banks of the river. Highfield Boats has loaned 40 rigid-hulled inflatable boats to the organizers for operational logistics. For security reasons, the captains will only find out which nationalities will be on board their boats just before the parade. The only known boats are the Greek delegation at the front of parade while France’s boat will bring up the rear.

The other question mark about the Olympics and Seine concern its pollution levels. Two events, the water portion of the triathlon and a 10K marathon swim, are scheduled to take place in the river. Last week, a spokesperson for the Department of Sport said the water quality was at acceptable standards for 10 of the past 11 days. But late last month, due to the strong rains, E. coli bacteria was above permissible levels for six of nine days. Swimming in the Seine has been banned since 1923, though last year a pre-Olympic triathlon took place to gauge its feasibility for this year. There seems to be no plan B if E. coli levels are too high for the swimming events.

French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra went for a swim Saturday with French triathlete Alexis Hanquinquant. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo was supposed to swim the Seine in June but, because of the French elections, rescheduled it for Wednesday.

The city has made cleaning up the Seine a priority by investing $1.5 billion in a network of underground sewers and treatment plants to trap sewage from rain water that would normally flow into the river. There are plans for three open-water swimming areas to open by 2025.

If the opening ceremony happens as planned, the parade should reach full tilt at twilight at the Alexandre III bridge, where the official grandstand has been built. All delegations will then disembark the boats at the Pont d’léna bridge and walk two miles to the Trocadero Garden for the official lighting of the torch.

“There are always a few athletes who don’t want to impose this kind of fatigue on themselves before the events,” says Reboul. “But most of them told us that they didn’t want to miss it for anything in the world.”

As long as the river cooperates.