Olympic gallop
Among the breath-taking scenes at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, there was one that made more than one spectator hold his breath: riding through the pitch-black night on a gleaming mechanical horse, a futuristic rider bearing the Olympic flag seemed to gallop weightlessly over the waves of the Seine.
Director Thomas Jolly's choice to conjure up an imaginary world around the horse is not insignificant: what better way to bring the precious banner with its five rings, symbolising the unity of the five continents and conveying a message of peace and solidarity, than to depict a ride, a sort of dreamlike quest by a rider who is part Joan of Arc, part futuristic video game heroine. This painting has the merit of renewing the genre of this very formal moment of the arrival of the Olympic flag at the site of the Games, with a great deal of grace and poetry. The symbol also plays on another level: the horse has, and continues to have, its rightful place in the Olympic adventure...
The horse itself, made of aluminium components, measures 1m80. Its sleek, gleaming lines reveal its anatomy and goldsmith's mechanism in a single sweep. The designers in Nantes were inspired by the work on chronophotography by Muybridge and Marey to reproduce the movements of the gallop and bring the legs to life. They called on a wide range of trades, including boilermakers, mechanics, engineers, designers and architects.
The animal can now be seen standing still, like a Degas dancer frozen in her resting posture, in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville until September 8. It will then be moved to another location in Paris where, we hope, we will be able to see it in motion.
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