Delivered. Can the Paris 2024 Olympic Games still be canceled? Some dream of it. The 2020 Games scheduled in Tokyo have indeed been postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and remain subject to great uncertainty. So why not question the following?
Marc Perelman, he would like so much that this meeting is abandoned that he already speaks about it in the past tense: in 2024, “The Olympics did not take place”. Under this title, the architect and teacher-researcher at the University of Paris-Nanterre delivers a detailed and very critical analysis of the Paris Olympics.
The author quickly takes up the most classic angle of attack, that on financial risks. Officially, the Parisian project wants to be sober and controlled, in particular since, in December 2020, the crisis due to Covid-19 led the organizers to find 280 million euros in savings. But in a provisional report, the Court of Auditors has already pointed out “Risks of undervalued additional costs”.
Above all, two Oxford academics calculated that Olympic budgets were on average 179% higher than forecasts, notes Perelman. Only those of Los Angeles, in 1984, avoided the skid. Can Paris escape this “winner’s curse”? Not easy. The number of tourists planned to make Paris 2024 profitable is now available “Very exaggerated” in view of the attendance actually observed in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, underlines the book.
A festival of superlatives
But for Marc Perelman, the real one “Olympic scourge” is not there. It lies in the gap between the myth built around the Games and their reality. Passionate about sport, to which he devoted several essays, the architect read line by line all the documents produced for the preparation of the Olympic Games by the Organizing Committee, the City of Paris, the State, etc. A festival of superlatives. Everything is only“Sportsmanship”, “Olympic truce”, “building a better world”, “magnificent event”, “unforgettable Olympics” allowing to “Spreading the Olympic dream among the population” …
The reality, seen by Mr. Perelman, turns out to be quite different. Sport for all, games, fair play, free? No. Rather an exacerbated competition between athletes supposed to represent their nations. Generalized doping. Inhuman training.
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