PARIS — If France’s recent parliamentary elections raised fears the country was veering toward the far right, organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony aim to project the opposite image of the country: open, inclusive and environmentally conscious.

As the International Olympic Committee seeks to reverse a decline in younger audience numbers by introducing more youth-oriented sports such as breakdancing and kiteboarding, the opening ceremony on Friday will aim also to set a Gen Z-friendly tone for the Games.

“We want people to understand from the first evening that these Games are a little unusual, that they won’t look quite like previous editions, so that’s why we were bold and ambitious,” Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris 2024 Olympic Committee, told a press briefing a week before kick-off.

For starters, it will mark the first time the opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium. 

Instead, almost 100 boats carrying a majority of the 10,500 athletes attending the Games will travel along the Seine from the Austerlitz bridge to the Trocadero — the esplanade across from the Eiffel Tower.

The 3.7-mile journey will take in landmarks such as the Île Saint Louis, Notre-Dame de Paris and the Louvre Museum, which will provide

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