PARIS, July 21 —The seven-year odyssey of the Paris Olympics should reach shore after a spectacular but hopefully serene opening cruise down the Seine on Friday at the end of a voyage that has survived rocky political moments.
Following the horse-trading to win the Games, came the French infighting over how to host them.
Paris was not sure it wanted to risk another rebuff after losing its 2005 bid for the 2012 Games to a London bid that the French believed inferior.
After the 2015 terror attacks on the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, elected Paris mayor in 2014, decided the city needed to act to rebound from the trauma.
Just after his election as president in 2017, Emmanuel Macron promoted France’s case to the International Olympic Committee.
Since 2005, France had built a national velodrome and a canoe-kayak venue near Paris.
”By missing the Games, we built all the facilities,” said a former elected official.
After Los Angeles agreed to go for the 2028 Games, France was awarded the 2024 Games in September 2017.
France would host a “sober” Games, using existing facilities and temporary arenas in postcard Paris: the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, Place de la Concorde. After testing the water with a cautious toe, it added politically-charged swimming in the Seine.
Hidalgo, a Socialist, dredged up an old and unfulfilled promise by Gaullist Jacques Chirac, when he was mayor, that Parisians that would be able to swim in their river.
On July 17, ten days before the Games, Hidalgo took a dip in front of a battery of cameras.
Behind the scenes, the waters were sometimes murky as the national government, local elected officials, and the organising committee (COJO) bickered.
”Deep down, we are pains in the ass,” said one former local elected official to describe the relationship with COJO.
Paris organisers have made much of the planned legacy. A major beneficiary was to be the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, to the north of Paris, home of the main stadium and the Olympic village.
But the high price of tickets and elevated security mean the residents have difficulty feeling included in the mega-sports festival on their doorstep.
Saint-Denis has gained a swimming pool but the department was deprived of several promised events. When shooting, to the fury of local officials, was moved in 2022 to Chateauroux in central France, the early stages of the boxing was switched to suburban Villepinte to compensate.
Hidalgo sent ripples through COJO in 2019 when she vetoed France’s oil and energy titan Total as a sponsor.
COJO did not plug its last big sponsorship hole until July 2023, when, after months of negotiations and “messages” from the Elysee Palace, French luxury goods behemoth LVMH signed.
”There are some bluffs in this kind of negotiation,” said Antoine Arnault, son of company owner Bernard Arnault. “We wanted to get our money’s worth.”
There were also culture clashes between French bureaucracy and the glitz and hype of anglophone international sports administrators and marketers.
The head of COJO, Tony Estanguet, a French triple Olympic champion, straddled the cultures by talking of an Olympics which will “break the codes”.
There was friction with the police when COJO and Paris decided to hold the opening ceremony on the Seine, breaking the tradition of Games beginning in the main stadium.
Originally planned as a people’s party along the banks, the police have had their way and most spectators will sit in allocated seats in fenced-off areas.
The budget has led to time-honoured problems as it has ballooned.
Paris has been hit by inflation as well as the Covid pandemic and the knock-on effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The IOC, which is struggling to attract potential hosts, agreed to lower standards.
”The instructions to the IOC are to help Paris. The Olympics must be a success,” one Olympic source told AFP.
Evens so, in December 2022, COJO increased its predicted operating budget by 400 million euros, more than 10 percent. With infrastructure, the bill is close to 9 billion euros ($9.8 billion), 2 billion more than the 2019 estimate. That still makes Paris one of the cheaper recent Summer Games.
COJO has suffered a few bumps along the way. It was raided on suspicion of a conflict of interest, in particular in awarding “consulting contracts” and Estanguet’s salary package has been subject to investigations by the national financial prosecutor’s office.
There was a race to complete all the work, with finishing touches still being applied days before the start.
Nicolas Ferrand, in charge of the construction of the athletes’ village, said he was in a “cold sweat” after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, fearing shortages of materials.
Whatever happens, “two weeks before everyone will say that ‘it’s a disaster’ and in fact it’s not,” said a close friend of mayor Hidalgo. — AFP
