Paris Olympics off to a sodden start with a rain-drenched opening ceremony

The elements succeeded where alleged Russian spies and railway fires had failed, stealing the soul from the first Games opening ceremony to be staged outside a stadium in the 128-year history of the Olympic movement, sending fans and athletes scurrying for cover long before French president Emmanuel Macron declared the 33rd Games officially open.

Wholly appropriately given the weather conditions, water was at the centre of the audaciously-planned ceremony with 85 boats sweeping athletes from 205 delegations on a 6km journey down river from the Austerlitz Bridge to their disembarkation point outside the Trocadero.

Tugs, two-storey pleasure crafts and, in the case of Eswatini, a lurching speedboat, ferried the stoic competitors down the centre of the Seine. Forget the usual stories of condom shortages in the Olympic Village: this time, it could be seasickness tablets that are in short supply.

It is 100 years since the last Olympics were staged in Paris, and almost a quarter of a century more to the first in 1900, by all accounts a shambolic affair, in which competitors were plucked from the crowd, live pigeon-shooting was on the programme, and the winner of the long-distance hot air ballooning category was promptly arrested for landing in Russia without a passport.

Prospective Russian interference was a contributory factor to an unprecedented security operation that has ringed the French capital with increasing tenacity over recent weeks, many of its famous landmarks, including the Seine, glimpsed only through gaps in dozens of miles of chain-link fencing.

Fears over the river’s water quality for the marathon swimming competitions had prompted Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to plunge in clad in a full-body suit last month, a luxury denied the Frenchman Charles Devendeville who won the underwater swimming competition in the Seine in 1900, after rival Peder Lykkeberg stayed under for longer but inadvertently swam in a circle.

Such farces might seem more at home in the city’s gaudy Pigalle, home of the legendary Moulin Rouge, a tradition noted early in the ceremony when Lady Gaga emerged from behind a pair of outsized pink pom-poms to provide a burlesque interpretation of the French revue classic “Mon truc en plume”.

Earlier on the opening day, away from the unrelenting rain and the strict security cordons, American rapper Snoop Dogg had carried the Olympic flame on a lap of the Stade de France in the suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, renowned for its flea-markets and a five-kilometre stretch of the riverbank known as ‘Street Art Avenue’ that reflects the region’s working-class roots.

An expanded urban programme is literally at the centre of these Paris Games, with skateboarders and BMXers and, for the first and perhaps only time, break-dancers taking over the Trocadero stage over the next two weeks once the ceremonial festivities have been washed away.

These days Paris is defined by its banlieues – vast social housing projects on the city’s outskirts – as much as its treasure-trove of historic monuments, and it is hoped this Games will inspire new stars from its fringes to follow in the footsteps of Kylian Mbappe, the boy from Bondy.

Great Britain is bereft of breakers in Paris, but among the cohort of 327 athletes is enough talent for elite funding body UK Sport to set a medal range whose top end is a potential post-War record of 70 podium finishes for Team GB.

As the rain continued to pour cold water on the painstakingly laid-out plans of the Parisian organisers – briefly fusing one of four big screen TVs above the temporary Trocadero stadium – a sodden-looking Tom Daley and Helen Glover held the Union flag aloft in front of the 37 other hardy GB athletes willing to expose themselves to the dismal conditions.

Bizarrely, what was supposed to be a Games to give back to the people ended in a drawn-out final phase of the torch relay, played out past largely deserted landmarks and broadcast via big screens at the Trocadero before judo great Teddy Riner and ex-track favourite Marie-Jose Perec jointly lit the Olympic torch.

Cue Celine Dion, and the end of a drenched and disconnected opening ceremony that never quite lived up to its ambitious billing.