Paris and the Olympics have changed each other during their summer fling
Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — In French, there are no goodbyes.
Instead, Olympic crowds from Paris to the surfing venue in Tahiti were saying “au revoir” — see you again — as the 2024 Games drew to a close Sunday.
After the 100-year wait since Paris’ last Games, no one can say when France’s capital and the Olympics will next embrace. But this much is certain: They’re both emerging changed — in some ways for the better — from their summer romance.
Paris’ third Games — it also hosted in 1900 — have been filled with passion. French fans surprised even themselves with their enthusiasm for two and a half weeks of sports, plunging into the party like Léon Marchand parting the waters for his four swimming golds.
Marchand, in particular, stopped time with his feats — forcing pauses in play at other Olympic venues because spectators cheered so intensely when France’s new darling won again and again. Other French medal winners like judo icon Teddy Riner and mountain biker Pauline Ferrand-Prevot also whipped up hometown joy.
Initial grumbling about barricades and other intense security measures that disrupted locals’ lives — not to mention arson attacks on France’s high-speed rail network — gave way to choruses of “Allez les bleus!” or “France, let’s go!”
There were uplifting stories galore for non-French fans, too. Quite literally in the case of Armand Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter who broke his own world record in winning Olympic gold.
Simone Biles shone, again. Having set the brave example of prioritizing mental health over competition at the 2021 Tokyo Games, she came back to win three gymnastics golds and a silver.
The Eiffel Tower peering over beach volleyball made that arena Ze Place To Be. Celine Dion’s musical comeback at the Olympic opening, belting out Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’amour” (“Hymn to Love”) from the tower’s first floor, was high in emotion.
Rain drenched VIPs and fans alike but didn’t dampen the wacky and wonderful opening ceremony. Its displays of LGBTQ+ pride and French humor were too much for some: Donald Trump and French bishops were among those who took offense.
As well as many highlight-reel moments, the Games also experienced lows. The ugliest were torrents of online vitriol targeting female boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting as well as the opening ceremony’s creative teams.
Still, like all good romances, the Paris-Olympics affair left fans yearning for more. That couldn’t be said of all Games of late.
China — as host of the Summer Games in 2008 and Winter Games in 2022 — faced accusations of human rights abuses. There was Russia’s doping cover-up at its Sochi Winter Games in 2014, quickly followed by the beginnings of its land grabs in Ukraine. All left stains on the Olympic brand.
So, too, did the wastefulness and corruption of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro that made authorities in Paris determined to do things differently.
“Breaking the norms” became the unofficial motto of Paris Olympic organizers, who worked to slash the Games’ carbon emissions and revamp the Olympic model to make it less anachronistic.
The results were evident. The Paris Games weren’t perfect — can flying thousands of athletes across the world ever be with the climate in crisis? But the French capital provided new examples of how the Olympics can be improved.
Take the Olympic cauldron, for example: Paris’ use of electricity and LED spotlights to make it seem that its cauldron was ablaze puts pressure on Los Angeles, the next host city, and Brisbane, Australia, in 2032 to not go back to burning tons of fossil fuels.
Also gone? Expensive new venues that don’t get used much, or at all, once the Olympics have left town. Paris instead widely used existing or temporary arenas.
Marchand and other swimmers raced in a came-as-a-kit pool that will be dismantled and rebuilt in a Paris-area town where kids can’t wait to splash around in it. Breaking (another innovation) and other urban sports played out on Concorde Plaza, where French revolutionaries removed King Louis XVI’s head.
When the lawns have grown back, there will mostly be only memories of other temporary arenas where archery, equestrian events and other sports looked as glamorous as Paris catwalk shows, set against iconic backdrops.
The Eiffel Tower, Versailles Palace, the domed Grand Palais (turned into a breathtaking arena for fencing and taekwondo) and other monuments became Olympic stars in their own right. The use of Paris’ cityscape showed that the Olympics can — and should — adapt to their hosts, not the other way around.
The sole purpose-built signature sports venue was the new aquatics center in Seine Saint-Denis, where China won all eight diving golds, an unprecedented sweep.
The northern suburb of Paris is mainland France’s poorest region and had such a shortage of pools that many of its kids can’t swim. Regional leader Stéphane Troussel told The Associated Press that thanks to Games-related refurbishments and newly built swim centers that teams used for Olympic training, much of Seine Saint-Denis has now largely caught up — in pools at least — with better-off parts of France.
But the city’s ambitions flirted at times with an excess of zeal.
Making triathletes and marathon swimmers do something that many Parisians recoil at themselves — plunge into the murky River Seine — proved problematic. Its waters were repeatedly deemed too dirty for training swims and forced a postponement of the men’s triathlon — moved to the same day as the women’s race, near the majestic Pont Alexandre III.
The mayor of Paris, who took a pre-Games dip in the Seine to demonstrate that its long-toxic waters are now swimmable, says 1.4 billion euros ($1.53 billion) plowed into a cleanup of the river is one of the Games’ most transformative legacies. Still, the water quality concerns raised questions about whether many Parisians will dive in when City Hall plans to open the Seine for public swimming next summer.
Massive security required to safeguard the opening ceremony along the river — in a city hit repeatedly by extremist attacks in 2015 — proved financially painful for nearby businesses that were sealed inside the security cordon and lost customers.
French authorities also made unprecedentedly broad use of discretionary powers under an anti-terror law to keep hundreds of people, often minorities, they deemed to be potentially dangerous away from the biggest event modern France has ever organized. The use of AI-assisted surveillance also fueled critics’ complaints that the Games are leaving an unwanted legacy of police repression.
Inside the high-security bubble of the athletes’ village, some complained about the eco-friendly cardboard beds, rooms that weren’t air-conditioned and shortages of some foods — byproducts of Paris’ drive for sustainability and waste reduction. Squaring the circle of how the Olympics can be viable in a warming world is going to be an ever-increasing challenge for hosts.
Still, the joyful crowds showed that the popular verdict was more positive than negative. The organizers’ slogan was “Games Wide Open.” Seeing such happiness on streets that felt so unsafe when al-Qaida and Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers sowed terror in 2015 seemed to complete Paris’ long recovery.
After the Paralympics from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, normal life will resume. But the Games will keep ringing in Paris.
A victory bell in the Olympic stadium that winning athletes rang in celebration will get a new home — a restored Notre Dame. The cathedral’s planned reopening in December, following more than five years of rebuilding after its 2019 fire, is the next big milestone on Paris’ horizon.
The cathedral’s rector, Rev. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, said the bell will hang in the roof above the altar and be rung whenever Mass is celebrated.
The chimes will serve as lasting reminders of the Games’ “extraordinary atmosphere” and Olympic-inspired “unity of the French people that was very beautiful,” he said.
“This bell will be the sign of how these Games have left an imprint on France,” Dumas said. “That really makes me happy.”
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Paris-based correspondent John Leicester has reported for AP from 10 Summer and Winter Olympics.
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
