Friday Briefing: The Olympics Begin
Let the Games begin
The Paris Olympics are finally here. And unlike the Tokyo Games in 2021, the stands will be packed with fans.
The opening ceremony is at 7:30 p.m. Paris time (that’s 3:30 a.m. Saturday in Sydney, 1:30 a.m. in Hong Kong). Athletes will float in on boats in the Seine, dressed in their national costumes for the parade of nations.
Some competitions have already begun, but the Games get into full swing tomorrow, with women’s swimming, men’s basketball and tennis. More than 300 events, many sprinkled across Paris, will take place before the Olympics end on Aug. 11.
“Gymnastics, swimming and track remain the heartbeat of the Games,” said Andrew Das, our lead Olympics editor. “Good stories there will make any Olympics more memorable.”
Names to watch: Leon Marchand, a swimmer known as the “French Michael Phelps,” and Teddy Riner, a fashionable French judoka looking for his third heavyweight gold medal, are generating some excitement. There’s also Simone Biles, the American gymnast who pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics, and the American swimmer Katie Ledecky, who is looking to add to her seven gold medals.
“There are few bigger stars than Simone Biles,” Andrew said. “And Katie Ledecky has a chance to become the most decorated American woman in Olympic history — a fitting moment in a Games that may, for the first time, have as many women competitors as men.”
More on the Olympics:
Here’s more on what to watch at the Paris Games, and sign up for our Olympics newsletter to follow all of the highlights.
A new poll showed Harris closing in on Trump
Vice President Kamala Harris is beginning her sprint to the election right behind Donald Trump, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll since President Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Trump leads Harris 48 percent to 47 percent nationally among likely voters in a head-to-head match, a substantial improvement for Democrats compared with a poll from earlier in July that showed Biden behind Trump by six percentage points.
In some ways, the poll shows a reset to where the race was before Biden’s poor debate performance. But in other ways, it signals how Harris’s candidacy has reshaped the election. My colleague Nate Cohn has more takeaways in The Tilt newsletter.
Biden: “Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” the president said in his first address since dropping out of the race. “That includes personal ambition.”
Wildfires engulfed the Western U.S. and Canada
Tens of thousands of firefighters combated wildfires in the Western U.S. and Canada yesterday, leading to evacuations and air-quality warnings as smoke drifted across large parts of the two countries.
As much as half of Jasper, Alberta, a Canadian town inside one of the country’s most-visited national parks, has been destroyed by a pair of wildfires that roared in from two sides. The mayor called the disaster “almost beyond comprehension.” We have video from the scene.
In Northern California, officials arrested a 42-year-old man who they believe started what is now the largest fire there so far this year.
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The village of Congham, England, this month hosted an unusual group of athletes: 85 garden snails competing in the World Snail Racing Championships. Each of the heats began with a snail master saying, “Ready, steady, slow!” Here’s the winner.
Lives lived: Martin Indyk spent decades trying to solve the riddle of Middle East peace as the U.S. ambassador to Israel and later as a special envoy. He died at the age of 73.
CONVERSATION STARTERS ARTS AND IDEAS When everyday life is the destination
For some travelers, the big draw in a new place is not a hot new restaurant or a high-end hotel, but stores and amenities where they can dip into the stream of local life.
Jon Natchez, a band member of The War on Drugs, seeks out produce markets when he’s on tour. He especially loves finding fruit he’s never had before. “It’s amazing how much specificity can be found,” he said.
Others let the birds lead the way. Wherever Lisa Morehouse, a radio journalist, goes, she opens up eBird, the crowdsourced citizen science app, to find out what’s been spotted recently, and then she plans her day accordingly, often going to parks she would otherwise never see.
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