PARIS 2024. Tony Estanguet ensures that any location other than the Seine is ruled out for the opening ceremony

Tony Estanguet écarte tout autre lieu que la Seine pour la cérémonie d'ouverture des JO de Paris 2024. MAXPPP – TERESA SUAREZ

The president of the organizing committee for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Tony Estanguet, assured Wednesday that his teams were not working on locations other than the Seine for the opening ceremony, hypothesis born after Emmanuel Macron's outing last month on the existence of alternatives.

"We, today, with Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the ceremonies, are working on an opening ceremony on the Seine. The teams do not work in another location,” said Tony Estanguet on France Inter.

Asked if it was not planned that the opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26, could be held on another site, he simply replied: "no' ;quot;.

On December 20, the President of the Republic assured France 5 that there were "obviously plans B, plans C, etc…" , for the organization of the opening ceremony, who would intervene "in the event of a potential threat". "If you have a rise in international or regional tensions, if you have a series of attacks" as in November 2015, explained Emmanuel Macron.

.@TonyEstanguet "sait qu'on sera prêts" pour #Paris2024 : "Ça fait dix ans que je travaille sur ce projet, ça fait 100 ans que la France n'a pas organisé les Jeux olympiques, on avance sereinement" #le710Inter pic.twitter.com/mFyea08zAY

— France Inter (@franceinter) January 10, 2024

This hypothesis of alternative plans was also supported on Sunday on RTL by the Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra: "if we are ever in an extreme scenario, with repeated terrorist attacks on our soil, obviously that' We need to have an alternative. The French expect it from us, she said.

Asked about the possibility that the ceremony would not be held on the Seine, she replied: "Yes, we will have to have an alternative to the Seine" .

The minister also assured that "different scenarios" were under study. "It's important. To govern is to plan, we must have this plurality of options, with this agility.

Tony Estanguet. MAXPPP – TERESA SUAREZ

On Wednesday, Tony Estanguet, on the other hand, considered that the head of state had been "right" to recall that the ceremony would be held with "a whole series of adaptation measures depending on a security risk, but also a meteorological risk, or' 39;technological incident, cyberattacks.