To Paris, chapeau. To Los Angeles, best of luck following that. To Brisbane, with the best will in the world, you’ve got no chance.
Where the Games go after that is the next major decision on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agenda, though not one that is expected for at least another year.
After a run that will have read France-USA-Australia, a move away from Anglo and western European spheres appears nailed on. Indonesia, India and Egypt are among those to have formally declared an interest, while one of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are bound to host one of these things before long.
London is looking even further down the track, to the 2040 Olympics, which Mayor Sadiq Khan has made no secret of his desire to host.
It is early days for that vision, which still needs government and British Olympic Association backing. Sending the Games back to London after a gap of just 28 years would be atypical, given Paris had to wait a century for the ones just gone. (Beijing, in fairness, got the Winter Olympics in 2022, only 14 years after the summer version).
Repeat hosts at tighter intervals will probably become more common as the pool of cities with either the financial appetite or existing infrastructure required to host a bloated spectacle shrinks. Prospective bidders turned off by Tokyo’s Covid-hit pale imitation and Rio’s waste, however, will surely be tuning back in now, having watched a Games done so right by the French.
Germany last week confirmed their intention to bid for 2040. The country has not hosted the Games since Munich 1972 and has a more compelling narrative than London already, given that year will mark the 50th anniversary of reunification.
Paris, though, has presented evidence to support London’s case, proving the Games can be spectacular without the need for, in comparative terms, lavish overspend.
The French capital built just one new major arena, an Aquatic Centre; London would not need any, having constructed a whole Olympic Park from scratch in 2012. Paris’s other major project was the Olympic Village, and London would need a new one of those, given the flats originally built for athletes in Stratford have long since been filled. Still, boosting the capital’s housing stock would hardly be an unwelcome consequence.
In these pages, the case has already been made for London to follow Paris’s lead in turning landmarks into venues, to provide a point of difference from 2012; skateboarding in Trafalgar Square, climbing in the Royal Albert Hall, archery on the Buckingham Palace lawn. No city will ever match Paris for aesthetic and iconography, but London could get closer than most.
The other thing about Paris, though — and where London should take note — is that for all the backdrop of history, for all the beautiful buildings where one King Louis or another lived and died, these Olympics were inarguably cool. They felt young and vibrant and joyful long before breaking’s misguided arrival, contrived for that purpose, on the final weekend.
No city will ever match Paris for aesthetic and iconography, but London could get closer than most
There was no overdoing the pageantry, no ramming of national tradition down throat. There was patriotism and pride, sure, but also a distinct lack of exceptionalism, right from the moment the world’s most famous international sports stars were invited to play roles in the opening ceremony that are usually reserved for the homegrown.
What the Olympics might consist of in four Games’ time is anyone’s guess, with new sports to be trialled in LA (cricket and flag football) and staples such as boxing and equestrian under threat. You would hope that by 2040 stadium DJs might have a repertoire expanded beyond Sweet Caroline and Freed from Desire, as well.
Speculating on specifics though, feels an act of folly, when so much of the big picture is in flux. And what will Britain look like by 2040, given at one stage during these Olympics, it appeared Team GB’s athletes would be returning home to an island aflame?
Then again, France, too, was a fractious place only weeks before their own, very different torch was lit.
It is naive to think the sense of healing and harmony that has infected the city this past few weeks will last, but also impossible not to leave Paris lifted by the knowledge that it happened and it was real. On that basis alone, the Games cannot come back to Britain soon enough.
