Paris: As the Paris Olympics 2024 finally kicked off with a glittering and unique opening ceremony on Friday, the Ambassador of France to India Thierry Mathou extended his best wishes to the Indian contingent, noting that the games are a good opportunity to develop a fine cooperation between both nations in sports.
After the first-of-its-kind opening ceremony on the Seine River, the highly anticipated Paris Olympics 2024 were declared open in the French capital on Friday.
Speaking to ANI, Mathou said, “We are very happy and excited that we will have the games, the competition. I want to wish the best to the Indian team and the Indian athletes. I am sure you will score well. I hope you get many medals. These games are also a very good opportunity for us to develop cooperation with India in the field of sports. A couple of months ago, we signed a Letter of Intent with the Ministry of Youth and Sports to develop the cooperation between France and India in the field of sport. We have a bright perspective on developing our exchanges and corporations… We are very proud and we are looking forward to all our Indian friends to be in France.”
For the first time in the history of the Summer Games, the opening ceremony of the Olympics was held outside the stadium.
The spectacular opening ceremony broke away from the convention by taking place outside the stadium. Rather, athletes were feted from boats cruising the Seine River, offering a one-of-a-kind show along a six-kilometre course.
Leading the Indian team were two-time medallist, PV Sindhu and five-time Olympian Sharath Kamal. This is the first time in the summer event’s history that participants have sailed through a river to enter the Olympics.
The iconic French FIFA World Cup winning midfielder Zinedine Zidane made an appearance in a pre-recorded video carrying the Olympic flame to kickstart the opening ceremony. From Stade de France, he sprinted and carried the flame.
After a glittering opening ceremony, the Indian contingent will be in action in seven different sports on Saturday, with shooting, hockey, badminton, and tennis being the standout sports.
A Saturday full of action will start for India with Balraj Panwar competing in rowing, in the single sculls heats at 12:30 PM.
Then, the focus will shift to shooting, with 10 m air rifle mixed team qualification scheduled for 12:30 PM, which will see the teams of Sandeep Singh/Elavenil Valarivan and Arjun Babuta/Ramita Jindal in action. The shooting action will continue with the 10 m air pistol men’s and women’s qualifiers scheduled for 2 PM and 4 PM, respectively.
The air pistol qualifiers will feature stars like Sarabjot Singh, Arjun Cheema, Manu Bhaker and Rhythm Sangwan in action. After some consistent shows in national and international events leading up to the Olympics, Team India would no doubt be strong contenders for a medal in every category.
A standout event for India today will be the first round of men’s doubles tennis, which will feature India’s doubles star Rohan Bopanna teaming up with world No. 65 N Sriram Balaji in pursuit of maiden Olympic medal from 3:30 PM onwards.
Having won a Grand Slam event, the Australian Open men’s doubles event with Matthew Ebden of Australia, Bopanna will be aiming to utilise his winning momentum, consistency, and experience in his medal chase, which he narrowly missed out on in the 2016 Rio Olympics when he teamed up with Sania Mirza for mixed doubles but could just finish fourth.
From 11:00 AM onwards, some badminton action will kick off, with men’s singles and doubles and women’s doubles matches set to take place till 5:30 PM. The men’s singles medal prospect and Commonwealth Games champion, Lakshya Sen, India’s red-hot men’s doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty and the women’s doubles pair of Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa will have the spotlight on them.
At 7:15 PM, Indian paddler Harmeet Desai will be in action during the preliminary round in men’s table tennis singles competition.
From 9:00 PM, the Indian men’s hockey team, a major source of pride for the country in its Olympic history, would start its pursuit for a medal in their men’s Pool B match against a strong New Zealand team. After securing a bronze medal in Tokyo 2020 after over 40 years, the Men in Blue will be raring to go out there and play fearlessly to change the colour of their medal to gold.
At 12:02 AM in the night, the boxing contingent of India will kickstart its campaign as well, with Preeti set to compete in round of 32 of women’s 54 kg category.
