But to me, the most breathtaking — and easily the most worrying — number might be one nobody has tallied, with the possible exception of French security forces: the thousands or tens of thousands of windows overlooking the July 26 Opening Ceremonies, along a nearly four-mile stretch of the Seine through central Paris, where hundreds of thousands of spectators will throng the river banks.
It took just one gunman firing from a single hotel window to carry out a massacre at a Las Vegas concert in 2017 that left scores dead and hundreds wounded. The Paris Opening Ceremonies are a very different event, in a very different place, with very different (and surely better) security plans in place.
Still, it’s worth asking: Can France — scene of the past decade’s two worst terrorist attacks in Europe, including one in Paris that began at the same stadium that will host many of this year’s Olympic events — ensure a reasonable level of safety on a physical scale that has never been attempted at previous Games?
That’s not a killjoy question. It’s a critical one that has preoccupied French officials themselves since the plans for the Opening Ceremonies were unveiled two years ago.
For the first time, organizers gushed, the ceremony “will take place not in a stadium, but right in the heart of Paris,” with a procession on 160 boats bearing athletes down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. They noted that along the route, one of the world’s loveliest urban tableaux, at least 600,000 onlookers — 10 times more than at almost any stadium event — would watch the spectacle “in the flesh.”
That “bold choice,” as they called it, certainly represents an awe-inspiring chance for the Games to draw an ever bigger audience; for Paris to renew its brand as one of the world’s most coveted destinations; and for President Emmanuel Macron, for whom depthless ambition is a defining trait, to leave an unforgettable visual legacy as he approaches the home stretch of his final term in office.
It’s simultaneously true, though, that terrorist groups and lone wolves could hardly hope for a comparably target-rich opportunity. “What terrorist organization wouldn’t want a big event like this to get noticed?” said a senior Western official in Paris.
For French security forces, the Olympics are a no-fail mission, and France’s police, army and special forces are widely regarded as competent and efficient.
They will deploy algorithm-enabled camera surveillance technology to screen potential assailants, a plan approved by a French court despite adamant opposition from privacy advocates. Tens of thousands of police, soldiers and private security personnel will be in place on and near the ceremony route. Snipers will surveil windows and roofs along the river route, and electronic jamming will block hostile drones that might try to fly near the event.
Security agencies will also benefit from the fact that despite the presence of illegal firearms in France, legal gun ownership is much less prevalent than in the United States — especially of military-style assault rifles, often used by American mass shooters.
But French officials remain faced with an event that is most likely too big, too open and too vulnerable to ensure safety comparable to other big-ticket happenings. The difference is simply one of scale.
Clues have surfaced suggesting that the French security establishment is privately nervous. One was an announcement last month that the number of ticketed spectators allowed on the Seine’s banks for the Opening Ceremonies will be halved, to 300,000 from 600,000.
Another came in December, following a knife attack near the Eiffel Tower, when a former director general of the French police, Frederic Pechenard, called for an Opening Ceremonies “Plan B.” Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, responsible for the Olympics and Paralympics, rejected that, while acknowledging that there could be “adjustments.”
Olympic host countries routinely strive to capitalize on their moment in the limelight, calibrating those ambitions against security practicalities and mindful of past atrocities at the Games. Those include the 1972 attack by Palestinian gunmen at the Munich Games, which killed 11 Israeli athletes, and the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Games, which killed one person and injured 111 others.
The question is whether the French have struck an intelligent balance between audacity and safety. If they pull it off, the Paris Games are likely to be hailed as the most spectacular ever. If there is a serious incident, the blowback will be unforgiving.
It was a French revolutionary, Georges Danton, who elevated audacity to the level of national identity. “We must dare, and dare again, and go on daring!” he told the nation’s legislative assembly in 1792.
But sometimes daring doesn’t end well. Two years later, Danton lost his head to the guillotine.
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