Olympics 2024: Global IT outage strikes athletes arriving in Paris

The Paris Olympics was affected by the global IT outage on Friday, with organisers temporarily unable to hand out accreditations to athletes and officials arriving for the Games.

Airlines, banks, TV channels and other business across the world have scrambled following one of the biggest computer crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus programme.

“Like a lot of organisations, we suffered this global Microsoft outage,” chief organiser Tony Estanguet told reporters, a week before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. “All of our servers were affected this morning.”

By 8:30pm IST, the organising committee said its operations were “now running normally”, with the evening hours at its accreditation centre extended to help clear a backlog of demands.

Thousands of athletes have begun flying into the French capital ahead of the July 26-August 11 event, while the organising committee is also distributing badges and uniforms to 45,000 volunteers.

The IT problems did not affected Paris airport operator ADP, but “the arrival of some delegations has been impacted by delays to their flights,” the organising committee added.

Cyber risks

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