Football kicks off Games ahead of opening ceremony

PARIS: The sporting action at the Paris Olympics kicked off with two football matches on Wednesday (Jul 24), two days before thousands of athletes and artists are set to take part in an ambitious opening ceremony at the heart of the French capital.

After years of preparation, and as more than 10,000 athletes are getting ready for their shot at one of the 329 gold medals that will be up for grabs in 19 days of competition, the first two events of the Paris Games kicked off at 3pm.

Spain's men's team faced Uzbekistan at a less than full Parc des Princes in Paris while Argentina, who won the title in 2004 and 2008, played Morocco in the eastern city of Saint-Etienne.

Meanwhile, the start of the Games was marred by a scandal over video footage that led to Britain's joint-most decorated female Olympian Charlotte Dujardin pulling out of the Paris Games.

The video shows Dujardin whipping a horse's legs multiple times.

"What is shown in this video is first of all completely unacceptable at any point, any time in a horse's training," FEI Veterinarian Director Goran Akerstrom told Reuters.

Paris 2024 is meant to be the first post-pandemic summer Olympics, after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, postponed by a year due to COVID-19, were held largely without spectators.

But three more Australian women's water polo players have tested positive for COVID-19, the country's Olympic team chief Anna Meares said on Wednesday, taking the total number of confirmed cases to five.

Six more men's football games were scheduled later in the day, including hosts France playing the United States at 9pm. France won the title in 1984 in Los Angeles.

Before that, Israel's opening Olympic football match against Mali is set to be a first security test for the Games.