The world's anti-doping police are at loggerheads, a child rapist is playing volleyball for Holland, a female British equestrian rider has been caught up in an animal welfare storm and Argentines are being booed by the French at every opportunity.
That is merely a snapshot of the past few days in Paris, in contrast to the message that IOC president Thomas Bach has been pushing: of peace, harmony and a Games to end all global conflicts.
In the lead-up to tonight's lavish ceremony, involving some 10,000 athletes on the Seine, he talked of them, somewhat naively, "living peacefully together under one roof in the Olympic village".
Tell that to tennis player Elina Svitolina, who will carry the Ukrainian flag at the ceremony and has talked so eloquently about her nation's struggles amid the ongoing invasion by Russia. And what of the 487 athletes already killed in that particular conflict?
IOC president Thomas Bach has long had ideas well above his station: once, with no sense of irony, pushing for a Nobel Peace Prize
Bach has long had ideas well above his station: once, with no sense of irony, pushing for a Nobel Peace Prize, and currently in Paris trying to rip up the IOC rules to hold onto the reins of power when his latest term ends in 2025.
While the German has pushed the message of this being the most peaceful of Games in history, it is very much one played to a backdrop of conflict.
Eleven of the 23 Chinese swimmers caught up in a doping scandal blamed on contamination in a training camp will compete, the upshot of which has seen a very public war of words break out between the World Anti-Doping Agency and the US Anti-Doping Agency.
There have been pro-Palestinian protests outside the French Olympic Committee over Israel's participation, while Argentina's rugby sevens players were roundly booed in response to the racist song filmed by Enzo Fernandez, following the country's Copa America football win earlier this month.
And athletes from Russia will still be competing, albeit without either flag or official uniform, having supposedly renounced the conflict in the Ukraine, while reports of cyber attacks marshalled by the Kremlin continue to swirl.
The list of controversies goes on and on, and yet they will take a back seat almost immediately the action begins in earnest from Saturday.
Paris will provide highlight reels and heartbreak, the consummation of three years' work often played out in just the briefest of moments, encapsulating the agony and ecstasy which makes the Olympics so compelling.
Such is the drama and breadth of sports, from teenagers and 50-year-olds rubbing shoulders in the same skateboard competition to NBA superstars and tennis gods with ailing bodies crying to be allowed into retirement, it makes the Games the ultimate sporting watch.
Paris will be a swansong for so many, most notably Andy Murray and perhaps Rafael Nadal still just about playing, but well shorn of the peak of their powers.
But Paris 2024 will be the start of the competition journey for many others, too.
There will be those that are currently nobodies back in the UK right now, but in a few days' time household names, returning to rapturous applause and flitting from one chat-show sofa to the next.
Predicting the identities of who they might be is something of a guessing game; potentially the cyclist Emma Finucane, rowers Emily Craig and Imogen Grant, swimmer Matt Richards, or myriad others.
And there will be those familiar from Games past: Adam Peaty, Keely Hodgkinson, Helen Glover and Tom Daley. But whatever their experience, it has been the same story of toil for three years — in the case of Olympic debutants longer — to reach this point together.
UK Sport predict Team GB will come away with 50 to 70 medals, and the team have traditionally emerged on the higher end of those predictions. Gracenote has used its prediction model to estimates 63 British medals: 17 golds and fourth place in the medal table. For all the tens of millions pumped into each of the Olympic disciplines from National Lottery funding, it is still a mightily impressive feat, emulated at each Games since London 2012 from a population of 67million, of which 327 are competing in Paris.
Female athletes (172) outweigh the men (155) in the British set-up at the first-ever Games where there is gender parity.
Bach, now the bastion of gender equality as well as a purveyor of peace, talked of "female trailblazers coming to life". He said: "Like billions of people around the world, we are awaiting with impatience the youngest, most inclusive, most urban and most sustainable Games."
He will get a further chance to push his message as tonight's opening ceremony reaches its conclusion on a 3.7mile stretch of the Seine, amid reported performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion amid the flotilla of athletes, high-wire acrobats and laser show beamed onto the Eiffel Tower.
And, mercifully, then the talking can stop and the Games begin.
