The journalist who returned to Athens after a 20-day stay in Paris fell from the clouds with what he heard from those around him. “Must have been bad huh?” “We learned that everything was wrong and upside down.” “The anticipation you had, you must have suffered unimaginably.” “The French made them mad.” Sorry, did I go to another Paris? The Olympics that just ended were amazing, perhaps the best ever, with asterisks (as always) mostly about the uncomfortable beds in the Olympic village and the pollution of the Seine.
The spectators who filled the stands lived a dream. The city hosted the Games without being too involved, but also without straining. We had no traffic jams, no crowded trains, no overcrowding. No, it wasn’t “all crap” or “crap”. The dystopia of modern Greece has altered our criterion and turns our gaze to things that are insignificant to the outside world. Like the protests of the priests for allegedly insulting religious symbols at the opening ceremony…
The element that caused intolerance and eventual rupture of the local communities with the “Operation Olympiad” was not the heavy budget (7.5 billion euros) but the hysterical security measures in the days leading up to the opening. Badly burned in the mess of terrorism, the French made sure to blow the yogurt too so they wouldn’t sneeze.
The decision to hold the opening ceremony on the banks of the Seine, along a 6km route with hundreds of thousands of spectators, forced the blockade of the area around the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower. Apart from those accredited, only permanent residents had access to the center of Paris, by displaying a special QR Code on their mobile phones.
But the average Parisian does not tolerate such pretensions. “We will not become tourists in our own home” many said and left for holidays in the Alps, Greece and the Caribbean. “Only during the pandemic did I see the city so empty,” said the surprised Airbnb host who hosted your envoy. During business hours, Paris in August was reminiscent of Athens in August.
Empty streets, full stadiums
However, the deserted streets were a mirage. When the flame of the Games and the lights of the stadiums were lit it turned out that the city was full of people who were thirsty for a good sporting spectacle and participated with their hearts. In the two and a half weeks of the celebration, an empty chair was a rare commodity. Almost all of the 10 million tickets released were sold, breaking all previous attendance and occupancy records. The facilities were crowded and the platforms were flooded with people.
And the ticket prices weren’t low, nor were students and soldiers recruited to fill the gaps. With a ticket of around 25-30 euros, you were sitting in some remote eagle’s nest of a fringe sport, while for athletics, swimming and other popular events, almost all tickets cost three figures.
In basketball, alone, more than 1 million tickets were sold, since the huge “Pierre Morois” stadium in Lille holds 27,000 people and was filled even in morning matches between P. Rico and S. Sudan. Every day outside the Olympic stadium, Roland Garros, Bercy and other places of increased interest dozens of sports fans were looking for “do more”. The ticket offices were all closed, as they had nothing to sell.
More than the dry numbers, the enthusiasm of the fans surprised, but also the knowledge of the subject. The French have a genuine love for sports and don’t wait for the smell of the medal and the “alozanfan” to go to the field. They understand when points are awarded in judo, they know what repechage means, they carefully measure the pedals of cyclists and they know how many sets a ping pong match is decided.
They don’t take to the pitch to complain about the refereeing nor are they possessed by a chasing frenzy like our boss. The doped athlete will be booed wildly, even if he is wearing the blue jersey with the rooster. They are normal sports fans and not fans of victory. The most glittering of the gold medals of the 2024 Olympic Games were won not by the athletes but by the spectators. Even if “the Parisians were absent from Paris” even if 19% of the available rooms remained empty.
Paris resented as much as Sydney in 2000, which is to say, not at all. He managed to integrate the Games into his daily life without any difficulty. No one liked to see 30,000 armed police on the streets and stations, but the blood at the Bataclan and Charlie Hebdo left no room for complacency. Hate messages spewing in Arabic dialects from dark corners of the internet combined with the tense international climate due to the genocide in Gaza compounded concerns ahead of the opening ceremony.
Sabotage on trains
“Better safe than sorry” was the motto. And indeed he did not open his nostrils on the days of the Games. The strange sabotage with fires on the intercity train lines on the eve of the Games was the only setback and was resolved after three or four days of cancellations and delays.
“France is under attack,” Macron’s ministers were quick to declare. The scary crowns were liked by patriots and the far right but proved too much, since the sabotage turned out to be rather amateurish and the claim of responsibility by a “far-left organization” was probably a hoax, as were dozens of bomb calls here and there.
There was no threat to human life as the sabotage took place at night when the trains were parked at the stations. Unlike other countries in name and not a village, which kill their children in train accidents and reward the murderers with votes, in France there is an automatic security system that controls everything.
However, the prankster who set out to climb the Eiffel Tower topless at noon before the opening ceremony managed to expose the authorities. “He could be belted with explosives” screamed – rightly – X (formerly Twitter). Fortunately for everyone, the only thing that was shining was his eye.
The Seine is as dirty as all the big rivers that run through big cities. If the perennial desire of Parisians to swim in its waters did not come in the way, the triathlon and marathon swimming would be held in a seaside city (e.g. Marseille) or even in the new rowing hall and the relevant literature would remain locked in a drawer.
The French got themselves into trouble and canceled without a reason. Even so, lamely and crookedly and marginally they cleared the Seine. Inside the walls, the criticism leveled had to do with the exorbitant and rather futile expenditure of the venture over other priorities.
On ready pitches
However, Paris did not build “white elephants” like the Athens of 2004. Almost all the sports facilities pre-existed and were simply embellished, while sports held outside the stadiums advertised the city and the country with exemplary tele-directing: Paris with cycling, Marseille with sailing, exotic Tahiti with surfing.
Where the French scored low in televised production was the parade of nations on the Seine. The distant shots hid the faces of the flag bearers and the – so evident at the closing ceremony – joy of the athletes who participated. For them, however, the cruise with the batou mouses next to the world heritage monuments of the city of light was a dream. For the viewers the image was problematic, but the athletes were delirious with excitement.
The opening ceremony itself has been targeted by global medievalism, which does not like to see multiculturalism and secularism, nor digintangs and feathers. It was not really a “festival of woke culture”, as Elon Musk and other masquerades complain in Stupid Fields, but an exuberant display of an open society and a country that has made an invaluable bequest to universal culture and human rights.
Of course, the presidential election that preceded the Games threatened to derail everything by installing the embattled Marine Le Pen in the role of hostess, in a Paris that would become a riot. But the French rallied and averted the danger. The Paris that welcomed us on July 26 was not a city of darkness. Ungovernable yes, but unruly no. See you soon, then. “Orevoir” and “atoutaler”.
The baton to progressive LA
What remains to be seen is whether the 2024 Olympics will be hosted by Donald Trump. Los Angeles will do what it did in its previous Olympics, in 1984, days of the Cold War and boycotts: rampant commercialization, selling out, kitsch galore, patriotic fervor, “USA, USA” ad nauseam.
California is – like Paris – progressive and has an allergy to Trumpism, but with a Republican government and even in a pre-election period, it will be difficult to show the planet its… woke self.
If anything, he won’t have to condense millennia of history into the opening ceremony. At the same time that France was experiencing the Enlightenment, the “red-skinned” natives of California were struggling to get rid of the white settlers arriving from distant Spain.
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