The organizers of the Paris Olympics are promising “revolutionary Games, the likes of which have never been seen before” and whose economic, ecological and social legacy will become the new model to follow.
This week we will reach the culmination of a long Olympic cycle with the holding of the opening ceremony of the XXXIII on Friday.e Olympiad. The first competitions will have already started two days ago and will continue until August 11, involving 10,500 athletes from more than 200 countries in 32 sports and 329 events that will be held in Paris and all over France, including overseas (Tahiti for surfing).
As always during the Games, we have been discovering (or rediscovering) the athletes, but especially “our” athletes, who will have the chance to go there. We have also heard a lot about the ambitions and problems of the organizers.
The water quality of the Seine River, where the triathlon and marathon swimming events are scheduled to take place, was discussed. There was talk of safety at the opening ceremony, which will not be held in a stadium, but on boats that will parade through the heart of the city on the waters of the Seine. There was also much talk of the Paris Games marking a return to normality after the pandemic Games held under sanitary glass bells in Tokyo in the summer of 2021 and in Beijing the following winter.
The marriage of two great brands
But the Paris Games will not be an Olympic Games like any other. First, because Paris is not a city like any other. The images of swimmers in the Seine, beach volleyball matches at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, skateboarding and breaking events at the Place de la Concorde or equestrian competitions in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles cannot fail to be memorable.
“We can expect some pretty fantastic images,” observes Benoît Séguin, professor of sports management and marketing at the University of Ottawa. “It’s the meeting of two well-known and popular brands: the Olympics and Paris, after years when the Games were sometimes associated with more questionable places, like Russia and China.”
Professor and director of the International Observatory of Sports Management at Université Laval, Frank Pons, agrees. “Have you ever seen the coverage of the Tour de France on TV? You see the riders crossing superb landscapes and villages. With the Paris Games, viewers will follow the greatest athletes in the iconic locations of a magnificent city.”
It’s hard to ask for more for an event that had already sold 8.6 million tickets ten days ago — breaking the record of the Atlanta Games in 1996 — and which is expecting to pass the 10 million spectator mark. But especially for an event that should be followed on television and on multiple digital platforms by more than three billion people around the world. And the fact that it is returning at times closer to those of the rich European and American markets, compared to those of the last three editions, in Pyeongchang, Tokyo and Beijing, should also help, while the ratings for the last Games were at their lowest and spectator sports are struggling to interest young audiences.
Cleaner, more accessible Games
This close proximity between the Olympic Games and their host city is not only intended to provide them with a beautiful setting. It is also part of a desire to carry out a profound transformation of the Olympic movement aimed at correcting some of its excesses, particularly in terms of costs, as well as reconnecting it with the population and its time.
The first edition to come directly from what is known as Agenda 2020+5, these Games were awarded to Paris by an ad hoc commission rather than by members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to end problems of corruption, lobbying and lack of appeal for the Games.
Unlike some Games that have turned into orgies of public spending and herds of white elephants, 95% of the venues for the Paris Games were either already in place or temporary. The main exceptions are a new aquatic centre and the athletes’ village, which will then be handed over to residents of the young and disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, in the form of social housing, student residences, offices, sports and community facilities, green spaces and even two new schools.
“It’s all about the costs and the time,” said Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee for the Games, this spring. The cost of the Games is expected to be around 10 billion euros, including 3 billion in public money, for net economic benefits of 6.7 to 11.1 billion in the Paris region.
To halve the carbon footprint compared to the London and Rio Games, 100% of venues will use only renewable energy and must be accessible by public transport.
The French metropolis will be only the second city – after London – to host the event for a third time, long after the first two editions, in 1900 and 1924. It was in 1900 that the Olympic Games were opened for the first time to the participation of female athletes. It took all this time for them to finally achieve, this year, perfect parity with men, at the end of a long process in which men’s-only sports were eliminated, women were included in other disciplines and mixed events were added.
To attract a younger audience, breaking will be introduced at the Games, joining climbing, skateboarding and surfing introduced in Tokyo.
While waiting to find a way to make room for virtual sports and video games, we will rely more than ever on new digital tools for broadcasting and interaction. For several months now, the sports component has been accompanied by a whole cultural program, called the “Cultural Olympiad”, in performance halls, museums and public squares across the country.
These are the most significant reforms to the Olympics since professional athletes were admitted in the early 1980s, some say. “Every Olympics comes with its controversies, big and small, and the Paris Games are no exception,” notes Frank Pons. “But the efforts made by their organizers and the IOC to restore the Olympic image are very real, relatively major, and could well produce good results.”
The Seine as a gift
For judoka Antoine Valois-Fortier, the Paris Games will be both a big change and a return to normalcy. A big change because after three consecutive Olympic Games — and a bronze medal — as an athlete, in London, Rio and Tokyo, he will once again be part of the Canadian delegation, but this time as head coach of the judo team. “That’s when you realize everything that was happening behind the scenes. As an athlete, I was taking care of myself, but now I realize that it was more complex and more stressful than I thought. But I’m happy. I was at that point in my journey.”
Paris will also mark a return to normality and the presence of the public, he continues. “For athletes who did not experience the Games before the pandemic, it will be the first time they will be able to bite into a real Olympic experience, and I think they will like it. We also had to talk about it, because it will also come with its share of distractions. We will have to save that for after the competitions.”
The significant measures deployed to counter terrorist attacks should make it possible to do so safely, if we are to believe sources from the French intelligence services quoted by the daily. The world Thursday. These same sources who, this spring, still described the threat as a “gigantic security challenge.”
In light of the many heatwaves that have hit France in recent years, athletes could, as in Tokyo, have to deal with crushing heat in Paris, a recent expert report indicated. “There is increasing question at major international conferences whether July is still the best time to organize the Summer Games, given global warming,” reports the Canadian team’s chief doctor in Paris, Suzanne Leclerc.
“ In the meantime, we try to control what is controllable, she adds. And we are pretty good at that in Canada. » This includes training athletes in saunas or sweat suits. It also means providing ice baths, cooling vests and ice-cold drinks to lower their body temperature just before competitions and place air conditioners in their rooms in the athletes’ village to help them sleep better.
Long a topic of discussion, the quality of the water in the Seine, where athletes will have to swim, no longer seems to be an issue. Nearly 1.4 billion euros later, the modernization of the sewage treatment plants, the connection of the barges to the sewer system, the construction of a rainwater retention basin and the generalization of the collection of plastic waste seem to have done the job.
The swimmers and boats at the opening ceremonies will have to contend with the current and water levels, which are higher than usual due to heavy rain since spring. Cleaning up the Seine and allowing people to swim in it again next year, 101 years after it was banned, were to be one of the Games’ main legacies for the region’s inhabitants and the planet.
“If it hadn’t been for the Games, which were an accelerator, we wouldn’t have made it,” declared Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Tuesday, who had just taken a dip there.
Friday’s party?
Judoka Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard wasn’t sure last month whether she wanted to be part of the group of Canadian athletes who will parade by boat Friday for 6 km through the city to the Trocadéro, behind the Eiffel Tower. But not for fear of attacks.
The athlete knows well, having already experienced it twice, how the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is an exhilarating and emotional moment. But she also knows how long and tiring it can be, with all the logistical constraints and the fact that there are not always toilets nearby, or something to eat. “In Rio, I spent five hours standing there even though I did not stay for the show. They say that in Paris, it could be a minimum of 10 hours. At worst, I will make up for it with the closing ceremony.”