Increasingly, our tyrannical sporting overlords seem to think they are Martin Luther King. Eight months after Fifa chief Gianni Infantino gave his ”Today I feel gay” speech, delivered with all the self-awareness of Jake Humphrey and the gravitas of a spoon, Olympic president Thomas Bach visited Paris one year out from the 2024 Games and decided to invoke John Lennon.
“The Olympic Games must never erect walls,” Bach said, forgetting about the climbing event. “Imagine. You may say we are dreamers. We are not the only ones.”
He was trying to explain why our fractured world needs the Olympic Games more than ever to help heal “conflict, division and war”. This seems like a stretch. Certainly, one person who needs the Games is Bach, a man who works for the not-for-profit International Olympic Committee and receives €275,000 per year in “indemnity” payments, in what must be the world’s most lucrative volunteer gig.
When not quoting song lyrics, Bach hailed Paris as “the best-prepared city ever”, and certainly there is a lot to be excited about and plenty to learn from the French capital’s less-is-more approach. Almost the entire Games will play out in existing venues or temporary ones, with only the athletes’ village and the aquatics centre needing to be newly built. That has kept costs relatively low (the total budget is €8bn, which if met would be about 60 per cent of Tokyo 2020) and will make the two-week event more sustainable, with little chance of white elephants littering the city as they did with Athens and Rio.
It is hard to imagine that the greatest sporting show on earth, hosted by one of the great European cities, will be anything other than a rip-roaring success. The opening ceremony will be boldly original in that it will take place not in a stadium but along the River Seine. The sporting action will see traditional events mixed with Bach’s push to make the Games more “urban” (a troubling phrase which sounds like something your racist aunt would say), with breakdancing making its Olympic debut.
But for all Bach’s optimism, there are still plenty of concerns 12 months out. Security is chief among them: the Games come less than a decade after the deadliest terrorist attack in French history which occurred in multiple sites across Paris, leaving deep scars and a city on edge. More recently, six nights of rioting after the killing of Nahel Merzouk followed months of protests which occasionally spilt over into violence. “The image of France is at stake,” chief Games organiser Tony Estanguet said this week.
Thomas Bach poses with L’Equipe newspaper in Paris— (Reuters)
Paris 2024 has problems even closer to home after police raided its headquarters last month. French police are scrutinising construction contracts amid allegations of misuse of public money and searched the house of organising chief Etienne Thobois, who denies wrongdoing. Perhaps Bach can imagine up an Olympics that is not mired in allegations of corruption because Paris follows a rich line of scandals at Athens, London, Rio and Tokyo.
Then there is the ongoing issue of whether Russian and Belarusian athletes will be allowed at the Games – Bach might need to solve this before moving on to world peace. Some events, athletics included, currently have bans on Russians and Belarusians. Others, like tennis, have minimal sanctions in place. Others, like gymnastics, will allow them to compete as “individual neutral athletes” which follows the IOC’s official position, but there remains an alarming lack of consensus with so little time left.
All of which has been a distraction from the raging climate crisis and imminent end to all life as we know it. The devastating European heatwave is a reminder of the potential conditions these Games could face, in the height of the Parisian summer. Organisers can only hope the capital avoids the sort of temperatures it endured last July, peaking at 43C, which would make conditions impossibly hostile for elite sport and the Games’ expected half a million visitors.
One concern is the athletes’ village where carbon footprint targets mean there will be no air conditioning installed to combat the heat. “The organising committee has taken great efforts and many measures so that [the athletes’ accommodation] can produce minus 6 degrees compared to the outside temperature, maybe even more,” Bach said when quizzed on sleeping conditions.
As in Tokyo, beds will be made of recyclable cardboard designed to hold up to 140kg. That is another boon for the environment but it means casual sex, traditionally a popular hobby among Olympic athletes, could be a precarious business. “They will be very happy,” assured Bach. “I have even had an opportunity to test a bed and I can assure them they will sleep very well.”
