The 2024 Olympics Might Have Found Its Star Already (Hint: Not Celine Dion)

I assigned a colleague to come up with a list of highlights of the Opening Ceremony at the Paris Olympics on Friday. The ceremony began at 1:30 p.m. on the East Coast and ended around 5:30 p.m., past midnight in Paris. The list was short. The ceremony was long.

The element of the show that took the most time — the introduction of each country’s national team streaming down the Seine in a riverboat — was actually the most enjoyable. How many athletes did Togo send to Paris? What does the national flag of Palau look like? Is that Sunisa Lee in the background? That suspense held me more than the forced plot point of The Phantom of the Opera parkour-ing his way around the city, or a breakdancing mime, or the interstitial musical numbers.

NBC turned the entire production into a variety show, featuring performances from Lady Gaga, Celine Dion and France’s beloved, beheaded 18th-century monarch, Marie Antoinette. Talk about a historical flex.

Maybe it was just me, but I spent most of the show waiting for NBC to cut back to the riverboats. The trip down the Seine was perhaps the most authentically Parisian and authentically Olympic moment the ambitious Opening Ceremony had to offer.

In an interview this week with the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch, Rob Hyland, the producer of NBC’s primetime Olympics coverage, said the telecast would lean into all that makes Paris, Paris.

“We really want to showcase the city as a character each night and take people on that magic carpet ride each night between 8 and 11 to get in the best seat they can to watch the games,” Hyland said.

By the time the ceremony concluded with the ceremonial lit cauldron — a balloon that subsequently floated into the sky — I felt like I had gotten what I came for: a bucket-list trip to a city on my bucket list.

I doubt sports will be an ancillary source of entertainment on every Olympics broadcast for the next two weeks. Neither can I rule out the possibility that the scenery of Paris will steal the show at every outdoor event.

The 2024 Olympics might have already found its main character.