The 2024 Summer Olympics started events yesterday, with Canada’s first athletes participating in archery and women’s soccer today.
The Opening Ceremonies for the Paris Olympics will be the first to be held outside of a stadium as the parade of athletes will be carried through the heart of Paris on its main artery, the Seine River.
“Taking on a new guise, the parade of athletes will be held on the Seine with boats for each national delegation. These boats will be equipped with cameras to allow television and online viewers to see the athletes up close,” says Olympics.com. “Winding their way from east to west, the 10,500 athletes will cross through the centre of Paris, the overall playing field for the Games on which these competitors will display their sporting prowess over the next 16 days. The parade will come to the end of its 6-kilometre route in front of the Trocadéro, where the remaining elements of Olympic protocol and final shows will take place.”
Canada’s flag bearers for the opening ceremonies will be sprinter Andre De Grasse and Weightlifter Maude Charron.
In Canada the Olympic events are broadcast across CBC and sports networks TSN and Sportsnet.
The live broadcast of the opening ceremonies will begin with “Countdown to Opening Ceremony” at noon Central Time on Friday on CBC or CBCs free online streaming platform CBC Gem.
Canada’s women’s soccer team is hoping to defend the gold medal earned in Tokyo in 2021’s COVID delayed games.
The program was thrust into controversy when team staff members were found to have been flying a drone over the practices of their first opponent, New Zealand on two occasions. The staff members were an assistant coach and an analyst.
Canada will also be looking for success in the pool with 17-year-old Summer McIntosh looking to prove herself at the highest level. According to a story on olympic.ca McIntosh will swim four individual events in Paris: the 400m freestyle, 400m individual medley, 200m butterfly, and 200m individual medley. It’s likely she sees further action as a relay swimmer for Team Canada as well.
McIntosh enters the Games as the reigning world record holder in the 400m IM. She won gold in the women’s 200m butterfly and 400m IM at both the 2022 and 2023 World Aquatics Championships.
Canada has a men’s basketball team at the Olympics for the first time in 24 years. Even with a much bigger pool of NBA players to draw from this time around Canada will still be in tough as they have been drawn into a group dubbed “the group of death.” They’ll play against Greece, Australia and second-ranked Spain. The top two teams in each group advance to the knockout round. Once past the group stage the team would inevitably come across the powerhouse team from the USA which includes LeBron James, Steph Curry and Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The women’s basketball team will be in tough opening the competition against home side France. They then go on to play third-ranked Australia, and wrap up the group stage against Nigeria.
Canada’s track and field team is hoping to bring home some hardware as well. Flag Bearer De Grasse will look to run Canada into the medal count in the sprints. He won the 200m sprint in Tokyo and anchored Canada to a bronze in the 4x100m relay which was later upgraded to a silver when a member of Team Great Britain tested positive for performance enhancing substances.
Other track and field hopefuls are 800m runner Marco Arop, and hammer throwers Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg who both won gold at the 2023 track and field world championships. Shot putter Sarah Mitton won silver at the world championships and won the world indoor title this past March. World champion decathlete Pierce LePage had to bow out of the games with an injury but compatriot and defending decathlon gold medalist Damien Warner will look to defend his title.
The Fort Frances Times will do its best to update you on Canada’s performance at the Olympics. For up to the minute information and scheduling check out cbc.ca/olympics.
