The Opening Ceremony for the 2024 Paris Summer Games saw a surprise induction to the list of prolific torchbearers – Spanish tennis great Rafael Nadal.

Nadal, over his illustrious career, has left an indelible mark on Paris, having won the city’s Grand Slam – the French Open – fourteen times.

The organisers paid tribute to the legend by knitting him into the most important part of the evening – firing up the Olympic cauldon.

French football great Zinedine Zidane passed on the coveted Olympic torch to Nadal as the ceremony moved to the promenade before the Eiffel Tower

It was a beautiful gesture, honouring the 22-time Grand Slam winner — who has 14 Roland Garros titles, more than anyone else in history — in the city that has witnessed his dominance on clay first-hand.

Nadal was then part of a ferry alongside Olympians like Carl Lewis, Serena Williams and Nadia Comaneci. This boat then carried the torch around the Seine and was handed over to Amélie Mauresmo, former world number one and director of the French Open.

Mauresmo then passed on the torch to French basketball legend and former NBA star Tony Parker. The duo jogged past the Louvre and its pyramid.

The whole group of torchbearers, 18 and made up of various Olympians and Paralympians.

Judoka Teddy Riner and athlete Marie-José Pérec then lit the cauldron, which has been installed in the Jardin des Tuileries, aligned with the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, and the Arc de Triomphe.

It was a ring of flames spanning seven metres in diameter with a hot air balloon attached to it, 30 metres high! This was a nod to the first hydrogen-powered flight of a balloon, which took place in the Tuileries in 1783.

The balloon took the cauldron high up in the French sky.