Odegbami stranded in London as arsonists attack train network in Paris

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach declared on Friday that he has “full confidence” in the French authorities after arson attacks on the train network delayed thousands of travellers just hours before the Games’ opening ceremony.

A series of fires has badly affected several high-speed rail lines within Paris, with around 800,000 people expected to be affected. Rail company SNCF described it as a “massive attack aimed at paralysing the network”.

The Eurostar has also advised passengers not to travel and cancelled some services.The Guardian learnt, on Friday, that Team Nigeria had just arrived in Paris less than 12 hours from their training camp in Germany through the fast rail before the incident occurred.

“Thank God we arrived in Pars safely before this ugly incident happened,” one Team Nigeria official told The Guardian in a telephone chat from the Olympics Village. We are preparing for the opening ceremony now.”

But former Green Eagles team captain, now Proprietor of Eagles 7 Radio Station, Chief Segun Odegbami, was stranded in London, on Friday, on his way to cover the Paris 2024 Olympics.

In a message to The Guardian, ‘Mathematical’ Odegbami wrote: “Cancelled Eurostar train services from London to Paris, and other local services within France, have left hundreds of thousands of attendees of the Paris Olympic Games in the limbo of uncertainty.

“Even as I am also stranded until the security measures are lifted, there are ‘eyes’ over the Olympics and the city of Paris that reveal that the excitement over, probably, the most romantic Olympic Games in history, is unscathed, buzzing and alive all over France.”

The opening ceremony began in Paris at 19:30 (18:30 BST), yesterday, with boats travelling down