Today at the Olympics: Opening ceremony, schedule and start time at Paris 2024

The Paris 2024 Olympics will include women’s football, handball and men’s sevens on Thursday

The 2024 Olympic Games begin today in Paris...officially.

We’ve already had two days of action ahead of the grand opening ceremony, starting with men’s and women’s football and the opening pool games in the rugby sevens, before yesterday saw the latter competition move into the knockout phase - with hosts France one of those making it through to the men’s semi-finals.

The handball and archery events also got underway - a first world record of the 2024 Games falling in the latter - on Thursday, while off-track (or field) there have already been a glut of shocking stories surrounding the Olympics, from Charlotte Dujardin’s abrupt fall from grace for striking a horse to an evolving storyline surrounding Canada Women’s football team spying on New Zealand with a drone.

However, much of that comes to a brief halt on Friday, as Paris 2024 gets its official opening with an evening ceremony of historic note.

This will be the first time an Opening Ceremony hasn’t taken place in a stadium, with Paris organisers having arranged for the city’s iconic monuments to play a big part this time around, including the river Seine.

There are no events taking place across the day as a result, other than some pre-event shooting practice, with Saturday’s schedule opening at 7:30am to see Badminton get underway the next Olympic viewing in sporting terms.

While all eyes will be on the ceremony as a typically positive and exciting opportunity to showcase a host’s vision of the Games, France do still have issues to solve, including one of their own athletes saying she’s currently banned from attending the event due to wearing a hijab.

Meanwhile a full Olympic Games schedule can be found here for all events and dates.

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