A year before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris, organisers revealed the torch, launching a countdown to Olympics ecstasy full of steely plans in a troubled and divided land.
Created by the zeitgeist designer Mathieu Lehanneur, the Olympic torch is sleek. At 1.5 kilogrammes, it stands 70 centimetres high, and is 10 centimetres wide in the middle and 3.5 centimetres at the bottom.
Aesthetes suitably satisfied, now a nod to the ecological lobby: ArcelorMittal produced it using XCARB recycled and renewably produced steel. Only 2,000 will be created to reduce the carbon footprint. Bless.
Enough, then, for the enthusiasts and the cynics to feast upon in the short term.
“Held with immense pride by the torchbearers and admired with fascination by the public, the Torch is a mythical object, special to the world of the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” said Tony Estanguet, the supremo of the Paris 2024 organising committee.
Projecting peace
“The Torch is an object that carries the values and spirit of the Games, spreading them through the Olympic Flame and the Paralympic Flame across the land and as close to everyone as possible before symbolically marking the opening of the Games at the lighting of the cauldron," Estanguet added.
At that ceremony, planned for 26 July 2024, Paris will - with all due respect - not be able to hold a candle to Tokyo 1964.
The torch was brought into the ceremony by 19-year-old Yoshinori Sakai who had been born in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, the day an American war plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Sakai, wheelchair-bound, was chosen to symbolise Japan’s post war rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Heft does not come more impressive. Still, designer Lehanneur says he wants the torch to project peace with the purity of its shape and rounded edges.
Rather than waiting until next May's sart of the torch relay from Marseille, organisers would do well to take the message of tranquility out immediately into the communities ravaged by rioting following the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk by a police officer on 27 June in Nanterre, just outside Paris.
Revamp
An estimated one billion euros worth of damage was caused during the riots and clashes with security forces in the wake of Merzouk's death. France’s social divisions and policing policies have also came under scrutiny.
President Emmanuel Macron was at pains to clean up France's image during a visit to New Caledonia this week.
"Order must prevail,” he said during an interview on TF1 television. “There is no freedom without order. Our country needs a return to authority at every level, starting with the family."
“France must invest massively in our youth to provide them with a framework," he added.
Olympics for all?
But ticket prices for the Olympics suggests that only the very well-heeled will be able to enjoy a day out at the fun fair projected as a “Games for all” extravaganza.
Of the promised one million seats priced at 24 euros – the lowest price – nearly 150,000 went up for sale in May.
But as these tickets were snapped up, other potential buyers rapidly found themselves facing much higher prices.
Three days after the launch of sales, tickets were on offer at 690 euros and even 980 euros for athletics semi-finals, and as high as 2,700 euros for the opening ceremony.
Nafissatou Thiam, Belgium's two-time Olympic heptathlon champion, told DH in Belgium: "I'm not even sure that my family will be able to come to see me, it's so expensive."
French judoka Amandine Buchard, a world bronze medallist, hit out at organisers on Twitter: "Olympic Games accessible to all, you said... In fact, you have to take out a bank loan so that families and loved ones can have the chance to come and see us. Well at least if by then there are still tickets."
#JO2024
— Amandine Buchard OLY (@BubucheOfficiel) May 16, 2023
Jeux Olympiques accessibles pour tous vous aviez dit… 🤔
Enfaite il faut faire des crédits à la banque pour que les familles et proches puissent avoir la chance de venir nous voir…
Enfin du moins si d’ici là il reste des billets… #Honte #Degoutée
France's Sports Minster, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, defended the pricing policy, telling parliament in May that ticket prices were lower than at previous Olympics.
So for the hoi polloi, then, it’s a competition to see the competition.
"Frankly it started very strong, almost too much so," the organising committee said of the demand for tickets. “It's proof of the huge enthusiasm.”
"We expected the criticism,” added Estanguet. “We were warned that the sales periods were a difficult time. But we underestimated the scale.
"With four million registered in the draw for 1.5 million tickets on sale in the second phase, we knew that some people would be disappointed."
David Roizen, a France-based sports policy analyst, told the French news agency AFP that a “Games for all” project could not exist in the money-spinning world of modern sports.
"The Champions League final, the Olympics, are events reserved for a financial elite," he said. "It is a mistake to have raised the prospect of a 'Games for all'."
His overview has been borne out with the opening ceremony along the river Seine.
When it was initially presented, organisers said 600,000 spectators could line the riverbanks along the six-kilometre route
During a test run last week, 39 boats sailed along the river between the Pont d’Austerlitz in the east to the foot of the Eiffel Tower in the west.
"We learnt today that it’s technically feasible," Estanguet told Reuters news agency.
But a two-tiered system will be necessary. Around 200,000 people will have paid for seats low down on the riverbank, while 400,000 will be able to sneak a view higher up for free.
Cost of the games
While the Paris organisers trumpet their idea of being the first city to place the opening ceremony outside a stadium, there are concerns about the social cost to such a whizzy idea.
A system of AI-powered video surveillance cameras will watch spectators. It will be tested during the impending 2023 rugby union World Cup in France.
Critics say that the legislation allowing cameras – some on drones and aircraft – to feed algorithms alerting the authorities to potential dangers, such as crowd surges or abandoned bags, is too gross an intrusion into privacy.
The law will operate at sporting, cultural or recreational events involving more than 300 people until 31 March 2025.
By which time, it will either become part of the everyday fabric of modern life and only ne’er-do-wells and social miscreants will want such life-enhancing apparatus removed.
Countdown
The usual suspicions will be presented in the coming months: will the infrastructure be ready? Is it worth the cost? What about the terrorists? And will there be a boycott if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to appear even under a neutral banner, while the war in Ukraine continues?
Such a snub would take Paris into the same realm as six other summer Games, most notoriously Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984.
Not the sort of stigma anyone wants after spending a couple of billion euros.
