By Kane Wu, Rory Carroll and Helen Reid
PARIS (Reuters) -Crowds braved queues at security checks and heavy downpours as they lined the banks of the Seine in Paris on Friday to watch an extravagant Olympics opening ceremony that featured Lady Gaga, the Can-Can and a horse galloping down along the river’s waters.
Olympics fever had been slow to build in Paris where local residents have complained about street closures in the heart of the city and local businesses have bemoaned a lack of trade as the French capital was transformed into an open-air fortress.
A flotilla of barges carried more than 6,000 athletes along the Seine river in a nearly four-hour show, as rain poured down, soaking competitors, VIP guests and some 300,000 spectators.
“The rain hasn’t been great, but everything else was honestly magnificent, the scenes, the dancers, the singers. It was a real success,” said Mickael Simon, a Parisian, dancing in the rain in a waterproof poncho.
“With a bit of sun it would have been cool, but we’re still staying until the end.”
Staff fought a sometimes losing battle to sweep the rainwater off the stage at the Trocadero, where French President Emmanuel Macron and an array of heads of state and celebrities watched on as the Olympic flag was raised upside down.
Paris had built the outdoor ceremony around a hoped for glorious summer evening, but the sun gods chose not to shine. For many the inclement weather that triggered flood warnings did little to curb their enthusiasm.
“We didn’t know anything about the rain,” said Xi Wen, 20, wearing a cut-out bin bag after paying 1,000 euros ($1,085.70) for her ticket. “But it’s still a special experience.”
‘MORE COPS THAN PEOPLE’
France rolled out an unprecedented peacetime security operation to secure the event. Some 45,000 police and thousands of soldiers have been deployed, airspace around the Greater Paris region shut down, and snipers positioned on rooftops.
“There are more cops than people, I don’t feel in danger,” said Jean Landerretche, a 19-year-old biochemistry student from Paris. But not everybody shared the excitement.
“How could they not have planned for rainy weather? They didn’t start selling the raincoats until halfway through at 8:30pm and there was a long line to buy the stupid raincoats. No umbrellas,” one Hong Kong tourist complained.
Yi, a Chinese national living in Paris, left the riverbank because there were too many people for a clear view.
“There are so many people, we can’t see anything on the river,” she said. “We live very close in the area so we got four free tickets but we are heading home. We’d rather watch it on our TV than on a screen here.”
Others didn’t need tickets to watch the show live.
Alexandre Pichot, 48, did not realise when he moved into a houseboat on the Seine that he would have front row seats to the opening ceremony. “It’s really great. We have some good food, good French wine, good friends,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
($1 = 0.9211 euros)
(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro, Kane Wu, Layli Foroudi, Sybille de La Hamaide, Mimosa Spencer, Zhifan Liu, Rory Carroll, Helen Reid; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Richard Lough; Editing by Ros Russell and Ken Ferris)
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