2024 Paris Olympics: Céline Dion, boat parade and more highlights from the opening ceremony (2024)

What to expect tomorrow

Reporting from Paris

The build-up to every Olympics always involves anxious headlines about what could go wrong. They miss the mark almost every time.

Who predicted that this history-making opening ceremony would be remembered for rain?

There were concerns over security, whether the river would be ready and the heat.But no one said, "what happens if it pours through almost the entire opening event?’

The rhythm of the Olympics is that all the fears fall away after the first night and the party begins.

That’s what happened tonight, despite the wet weather. It was a party. And the adversity of downpours just added to the determination to have a good time.

Singer Céline Dion, who performed “Hymne à l’amour” at the opening ceremony of the Paris Games earlier today, took in the sights and sounds of Paris before her performance.

“I’m so happy to be here with you this week! I’d like to also extend a warm thank you to the local Gendarmes for keeping us safe," she wrote on a social media post that included a photo she snapped with police.

She also made a stop at the world-famous Louvre earlier this week.

"Every time I return to Paris, I remember there’s so much beauty and joy still to experience in the world," she wrote.

Reporting from Paris

Paris is the first place on Earth where humans fully realized our dreams of flight — all the way back in 1783.

The original hot air balloon piloted by humans was built by the Montgolfier brothers and launched in November 1783. Then, a week later, a gas balloon piloted by Jacques Alexander Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert took off from the Louvre in front of King Louis XVI and 400,000 Parisians.

From then until the Wright brother’s, the French were the rulers of the sky. For a century the balloons, not the Eiffel Tower, defined the Paris skyline.

At one point in the 1870s, a massive tethered hydrogen balloon was also tethered in front of the Louvre and carried some 36,000 royals, scholars, dignitaries and normal citizens up into the heavens.

Stay tuned for a story about the history of ballooning, airing on the Olympic Zone.

A spectacular light show was displayed on the Eiffel Tower as the torch made its way to its final destination: the cauldron.

Tennis star Rafael Nadal expressed his feelings about being at the Paris Games and opening ceremony with a heart emoji.

Earlier today, soccer great Zinedine Zidane passed the Olympic torch to Nadal during the opening ceremony near the end, close to the lighting ceremony.

U.S. women's soccer forward Mallory Swanson lauded the team's preparation after a comfortable 3-0 win in their Olympic opener against Zambia yesterday.

Swanson, who scored two of the USWNT's three goals against Zambia told NBC News: "I think that we ultimately just had a really fast start to the game. This past week, we’ve been really focusing on finishing and I think it paid off."

Teammate Trinity Rodman was also on the scoresheet for the U.S., claiming her first Olympic goal, and she couldn't have been happier about the outcome.

"It felt amazing," Rodman said when Hoda Kotb asked about her goal. "It couldn’t have gone any better, so I’m very happy."

The team's focus now turns to Sunday's match against Germany.

The Beyhive collectively gasped tonight when Beyoncé appeared in a pre-recorded segment to support Team USA.

The singer donned a special Team USA bodysuit and floor-length jacket for the occasion, along with a sparkly American flag cowboy hat to introduce the athletes.

“Get a look at America y’all. These hopes and dreams. These superstars that represent us, the people of this big bold beautiful complicated nation, all rooting together for them,” she said over the track of her hit “Ya Ya.”

“We’ve got superstars and we’ve got legends,” she continued. “We’ve got big dreamers, who fought their whole lives to get here. Who gave up everything for one shot and made it.”

“That pride and thatjoy, that’s what gets me about this team and that’s what makes mebelievein this team,” she said. “And thats why I can’t wait to see what they pull over these next 16 days.”

“America, give it up for Team USA,” she concluded. “The very best of who we are. What a vision to behold. What a team to believe in. What a night to celebrate.”

As the coverage returned to the flotilla on the River Seine and Team USA floated across, the hosts were thrilled about the Beyoncé appearance.

“Y’all, and what about Beyoncé?” pop star Kelly Clarkson asked. “Just kicking everything off and getting everybody amped for this. I couldn’t think of a more perfect artist to do that for these athletes.

“If I’m Steve Kerr, I’m showing that video before my game,” former NFL player Peyton Manning replied, referring to the Team USA men's basketball coach. “Let Beyoncé do all the talking.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song “Imagine” has been a mainstay of the Olympics ever since Stevie Wonder performed it at the 1996 Atlanta Games in memory of the victims of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

The song is one of several symbols that represent peace at the Games — white doves and olive branches among them. While those symbols are represented at every Games, they are particularly salient in 2024 as the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 39,000, while the war in Ukraine is well into its third year.

One year ago today, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach quoted the song against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

“The Olympic Games must always build bridges. The Olympic Games must never erect walls. Imagine. You may say we are dreamers. We are not the only ones,” Bach said.

Only months later, the Israel-Hamas war would erupt.

This year, the song was interpreted by French singer Juliette Armanet, accompanied by pianist Sofiane Pamart. A float on the Seine included ground that appeared to be crumbling a piano aflame.

In the delayed 2021 games, a star-studded lineup including John Legend and Keith Urban sang the song.

U.S. track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson was savoring the experience of floating down the Seine with other athletes at the Paris Games opening ceremony earlier today.

“The journey that we’ve been experiencing so far has been phenomenal. The art, the culture, the love from the fans,” Richardson said.

She also called the experience "humbling" but said all the athletes worked hard to be there, and deserve to be there.

Asked what her 9-year-old self, who had just started running track, would say to the now 24-year-old Richardson cited hard work.

“No matter what happened, no matter what was going on, you stayed committed to the fact that you love what you love, you put your full self into what you’re doing,” Richardson said.

“That’s all that matters, and it’s always going to show.”

Richardson is the heavy favorite in the women’s 100-meter.

“When everyone walks away from the Paris Olympics — including Sha’Carri Richardson — I will be saying, and the world will be saying, that Sha’Carri Richardson put her best self and her full self in front of the world,” she said.

As the Summer Olympics take place in France (and Tahiti), astronauts on the International Space Station are having their own out-of-this-world competition.

NASA posted a video on YouTube of its astronauts "getting into the Olympic spirit," carrying their own Olympic torch at zero gravity along with a training montage.

"We can't imagine how hard this must be to be such a world class athlete doing your sports under actual gravity," astronaut Matt Dominick said to Olympians on Earth. "So from all of us aboard the International Space Station to every single athlete in the Olympic Games, godspeed."

Harvard University is known for a lot of things — but being an Olympic powerhouse hasn’t always made that list.

However, its fencing program has been dominating a niche in the sports world. Of the 20 fencers headed to the Olympics for the U.S., six are past, current or soon-to-be Harvard athletes. And two more Harvard fencers are set to compete in Paris as part of Canada’s national team.

Of the six Crimson athletes on the U.S. team, four are alumni — three of whom graduated only two months ago — one is a rising college senior and the other is a high schooler committed to the university.

Read the full story here.

Opening ceremony co-host for NBC and Super Bowl champion QB Peyton Manning broke out the wristband that quarterbacks use to keep track of plays during the procession of athletes down the river Seine.

“Oh, this is just my wristband,” Manning, who has won two Super Bowls, said when questioned about it by Kelly Clarkson.

“I, you know, have notes on all 200 countries and all 10,000 athletes -- that’s not normal?” Manning joked.

Reporting from Paris

While millions of TV viewers were wowed by the grandeur of today's opening ceremony, paying customers who shelled out thousands of dollars to be there and shiver in the rain were far less impressed.

"There was not a real show for us," said student Hannah Margram, 24. “It was too big and too long, so it wasn't a good experience for anybody."

A seat at the opening ceremony amounted to watching a massive TV monitor and waving at passing boats without actually witnessing any live acts.

"I don't think passing boats is worth the price," photographer Raphael Metivet said of his 1,600-euro seat. "There's no entertainment in front of us, there's nothing happening . We just saw boats passing by."

The Paris Olympics’ surfing venue, Teahupo’o in French Polynesia nearly 10,000 miles from the city, is welcoming tasty waves this weekend, with the first of four days of competition scheduled tomorrow amid a nine-day window designed to allow for flat, off days.

The event is composed of six rounds, starting with tomorrow’s eight heats featuring three surfers each, and including quarterfinals, semifinals and final — the latter three planned for a single day. Event forecaster Kurt Korte of private wave forecast service Surfline is enthused about the expected conditions, with head-high to “several feet overhead” waves en route, he said.

“Lots of opportunity for some good waves,” Korte said. “Should be a great day.”

He credits two overlapping southwest swells that will hit the reef off the village of Teahupo’o to create its churning, left-breaking barrel. Competitors who can paddle into that barrel and spend quality time there with style, and without wiping out, could wow judges and grab a heat-winning bye into Round 3. Team USA surfer and world No. 1 Caitlin Simmers of Oceanside, California, will be looking for those sustainable tubes on Saturday.

Light, northeast winds are likely to help by contributing to clean conditions free of chop, Korte said.

The break could see a bump in size on Tuesday, when waves 8 to 12 feet are in the Surfline forecast. Organizers hope that Tuesday will host the event’s final rounds.