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The 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris are scheduled to begin on July 26.
That is exactly one week from the date of this article. But on Friday morning, workers prepping for the games were brought to a standstill when a global cyber outage shut down operations across the globe.
The tech outage was seemingly tied to issues at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft and affected operations in sectors from commercial aviation to media and finance.
“We have activated contingency plans in order to continue operations,” the organizing committee said in a statement.
“At this point, the impacts are limited and concern in particular the delivery of uniforms and accreditations.
“Paris 2024’s ticketing systems have been unaffected. The operations around the preparation of venues is continuing normally, and work schedules are not at risk. The torch relay is continuing along its route as normal.”
Preparation eventually continued later Friday morning. But it required workers to do things the old-fashioned way.
Security at the press center performed checks manually using a list of names, while the accreditation process was halted entirely.
“I’ve arrived in Paris this morning and went to get my accredidation validated and have been told no,” Sky Sports New Zealand journalist Wilson Catton said. “They can’t issue any accreditation or anything for I don’t know how long.”
Tony Estanguet, the head of the Paris Olympics Organising Committee, told reporters that he committee was “hoping that Microsoft can solve the outage very quickly.”
It’s just the latest in a long line of issues ahead of the Paris games.
Not the least of which is the iconic Seine River, which is set to be used for open water events. However, high levels of fecal matter and contamination have spiked fears about the safety of the water.
French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra took a symbolic swim in the river on Saturday to prove that it can be done. But even that turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
One way or another, the Olympic Games will start next week in Paris. But it’s been tough sledding to get to that point.