Celine Dion and Lady Gaga may get caught in the storms set to hit the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony Friday.
There has been widely circulating speculation that the duo will perform Édith Piaf's "La Vie En Rose" at the end of the ceremony, which starts 7.30 p.m. Their performance was to be the finale of an unprecedented ceremony involving the 10,500 athletes traveling down the river Seine from the Austerlitz bridge in the east to the Eiffel Tower. The 6 km route would end in front of the Trocadéro, where the remainder of the Olympic ceremony will commence.
However, the opportunity for the Paris 2024 team to make history in organizing the first Olympic opening ceremony that begins outside a stadium might be scuppered by the forecast of stormy evening.
The weather has been a concern for the head of the organizing committee Tony Estanguet for some time, who said this week that he checked the forecast for Friday night's ceremony "more than 400 times." He even woke up this morning and "popped my head out of the window," he told France Inter.
As a result, Estanguet said plans for the act might have to be adapted. He said: "We've designed the show so that it can be held in the rain. It may be a bit different, but some people who are used to doing shows also say that it adds a very nice atmosphere to the image. So we'll see what happens. What's certain is that we'll adapt."
He added that the team is "prepared for every possible scenario," whether that's rain or a heatwave. "The models are very, very unstable. It's true that the closer we get, the more the model looks like confirming rain this evening, so once again, we're going to adapt. It's going to be a good time. It's going to be a great party. We'll be launching these games that we've been waiting so long to see," he said.
Various outlets forecast different degrees of rain in Paris for this evening, but all appear to share the consensus that umbrellas will be essential. EuroNews reports a 90% chance of rain at some point in the evening. Precipitation is forecast to be 25mm, or around 1 inch.
The weather is not the first disruption the Paris 2024 team has encountered. On Friday morning, France's high-speed rail network was targeted with arson attacks by vandals just hours before the opening ceremony, heightening security protections and causing havoc for around 250,000 travelers expected to travel today, according to SNCF.
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