Ready to Secure the 2024 Paris Olympics, French Special Forces Commander GIGN: Risk Minimized

GIGN personnel exercise. (Wikimedia Commons/Domenjod)

JAKARTA - The French special forces commander said his unit was ready to secure the 2024 Paris Olympics by minimizing threats as much as possible.

The National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) is holding training on the outskirts of Paris, part of its preparations ahead of the international sports event which will be held from July 26 to August 11.

About 50 khaki-clad men driving black armored trucks approached the abandoned office building, blowing out second-story windows with explosive devices.

After cleaning shards of glass from the window frames, they made their way through the gaping hole and into the graffiti-covered building to search for hostages.

As the exercise ended, a camouflaged helicopter approached over the building and picked up the freed GIGN personnel and hostages, by attaching them to specially prepared ropes.

GIGN personnel training. (Wikimedia Commons/Domenjod)

It was one of the last rehearsals before the elite squad secured the title at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

GIGN Division Commander General (Major General) Ghislain Rety said his team was ready.

"It would be dishonest to say there is no risk, but it is minimized as much as possible," he said, as reported by Reuters, May 8.

GIGN personnel training. (Wikimedia Commons/Domenjod)

Paris has been on high alert since a 2015 radical group attack that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.

However, the Olympics and especially the Opening Ceremony, pose a security challenge like no other. With 300,000 people watching from the riverbank and millions more watching on television, the ceremony will take place on a barge along the six-kilometre-long River Seine.

Rety explained that GIGN would place two people in plain clothes, so as not to disturb the audience, on each barge carrying the athletes, with 350 GIGN officers assigned to the Opening Ceremony.

Meanwhile, snipers will be stationed on the roofs of the magnificent buildings that line the River Seine, and troops will also be deployed beneath the city streets. In all, around 50,000 French police and soldiers will secure Paris during the Games, with additional help from several thousand foreign security officers.

GIGN, which usually performs eight operations a day across France and around the world, has been preparing for the Olympics for about 18 months, Rety said.

One of the main difficulties was coordination with other French troops and foreign delegations.

“But we like complexity,” he said.

"This is a good challenge," he said.