WIDER IMAGE - From the sidelines: Navigating the Paris 2024 Olympic...

Picture essay: website

By Eve Watling

PARIS, Aug 6 (Reuters) - The landmarks of Paris are among the best known in the world but the arrival this year of the biggest sporting show of them all has brought a special Olympic touch to the city's iconic buildings and structures.

The French capital is no stranger to visitors in the summer months but the normal tourist hordes have been joined this year by millions of sports fans pouring into the city to watch the Games or logo design just soak up the atmosphere.

Paris Olympics organisers have made a virtue of scheduling sports competitions in the centre of the city, from the fencing in the splendour of the Grand Palais to the beach volleyball in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Navigating the spectacle of the Olympics has not been without its challenges for the out-of-towners, however.

Trains ground to a halt before the Games even began, when an unidentified group sabotaged the train network. The opening ceremony, the first to be held outside a stadium, left spectators drenched as rain poured down for much of the four-hour show.

A subsequent heatwave saw pedestrians cooling themselves under water misters, as train and metro operators distributed water to travellers.

Security has been highly visible and there have been grumbles from locals that the barriers chopping up the city's pavements have been hurting local businesses by deterring tourists from certain areas.

Joining the scrum of tourists, sports fans and what locals remain in the month when the city usually shuts down for its summer holiday have been the team of Reuters photographers.

Assembled from around the world, the crack photojournalists have been shuttling around the city from venue to venue, mostly on public transport, capturing the images that will define the Games.

Edgar Su, who is based in Singapore, is no stranger to covering major international sporting events but even he found getting around Paris a challenge at the start.

"On my first day, I thought there was an error with my Google maps app because I couldn't find the metro entrance," Su said.

"I almost missed my stop because I couldn't figure out how doorknobs work on the trains. It was a little disorientating to use that metro on the first day but very quickly it became a reliable form of transport."

While the Olympic commute means humping heavy gear up and down flights of metro steps and praying that the rain holds off, it has also gave the photographers the chance to capture the fans and locals as they too navigate the city.