Paris, here we go! The 33e Olympiad has taken the front of the Seine. No less than 10,500 athletes from all over the world compete in talent and courage, in 43 disciplines, for the pleasure of 3 billion human beings, glued to their screens.
It is impossible to align these numbers and letters without thinking of the most poetic Olympic statistician, Paul Houde, who passed away last March.
The 2024 Paris Olympics will be the first Games of the modern era that Paul Houde will not have in his memory. He lived through 17 in the summer, 18 in the winter and learned by heart the first 12 in the summer and the first 6 in the winter. In short, he had 53 in him.
Every time I ran into my friend Paul, the conversation quickly turned into a sporting duel, where each of us, like musketeers of knowledge, tried to pierce the other with our pointed questions. In the hockey category, I did well. In the Olympic Games category, I got wiped. Excuse the pun.
Coming back home, I dove into Olympic literature, to prepare myself for an upcoming confrontation. No matter how motivated I was, wanting to put on a good show, in front of the great Jedi, it was too much. Far too much. The Olympic Games are statistical works. Billions and billions of pieces of information. Dates, names, origins, measurements, speeds, distances, conditions.
It is one thing to know that in 1952, at the Helsinki Games in Finland, Czechoslovak Emil Zátopek won three gold medals. It is another thing to know how Zátopek won his three gold medals. First, he won the 10,000-meter race in an Olympic record time of 29 minutes and 17 seconds, 120 meters ahead of Frenchman Alain Mimoun and 31 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Aleksandr Anufriyev of Russia. Then, in the 5,000 meters, Zátopek overtook the two leading opponents on the last bend to set a new record in 14 minutes, 6 seconds and 6 tenths. Tenths are very important. At the same time, and what a delicious detail, Zátopek’s wife, Dana Zátopková, won the javelin event. Finally, in the marathon, a distance that Zátopek was running for the first time, he dominated his opponents, entering the stadium, to finish the 42 km, fresh as a daisy, laughing with the spectators, after 2 hours 23 minutes and 2 seconds of effort, a new Olympic record. Paul Houde knew all this about Zátopek.
But he didn’t know it like artificial intelligence knows it. He knew it with stars in his eyes, recounting the athlete’s exploits with such passion and admiration that he was as out of breath as his hero after a competition.
Paul didn’t just have a PhD in Zátopek, he had one in Usain Bolt, in Allyson Felix, in Carl Lewis, in Paavo Nurmi, in Michael Phelps, in Lisa Carrington, in Hubert Van Innis, in Takashi Ono, in Agnes Keleti, in Bruny Surin…
In hundreds and hundreds of men and women who exceeded their limits. For Paul, statistics were more than numbers, they were brothers and sisters.
I never managed to trap Paul Houde with an Olympic glue. It’s not that I didn’t try. Paul always took off. Like a plane. Or like Usain Bolt.
I will think about him a lot in the coming days, especially during the athletics. We will miss his enthusiasm.
The last time I wrote a column about Paul Houde was right after his death. Our screens were filled with touching testimonies about him. Then time passes. And great personalities, despite all the heartfelt cries their deaths provoke, end up no longer being mentioned. It is the natural sorting of our concerns that takes place. The living and others who have passed away pass in front.
Fortunately, the thread of time is responsible for reminding us of the people who have left their mark on us. Because if the praises fly away, the mark remains. And the more a person has loved life, the more life reminds us of them.
We all thought of Paul Houde during the total eclipse of April 8, because Paul was crazy about astronomy. We all think of Paul Houde during the Paris Games, because Paul was crazy about the Olympic Games.
He was also crazy about aviation, geography, history, American football, radio, caravanning… He never ceases to come back to us. So much the better, it feels good to think of him. It makes you want to know more. To know more about everything, everything, everything.
Happy Olympics, everyone!
Let’s live them intensely, like Paul.