Just a few weeks before the start of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the American former athlete Tommie Smith was in the French capital and inter alia recounting how he and fellow sprinters John Carlos and Peter Norman essentially winged their way into what would become one of the most enduring and powerful images in Olympic history.
"I went to Mexico City to win the race, not to necessarily make a statement," said the 80-year-old who claimed the 200 metres dash in October 1968 in a world record time of 19.83 seconds.
"It was talked about only moments before the race," Smith recalled. "It wasn't something John and I decided months before ... only that we had to win the race to make a statement. What statement? I really didn't know."
But the plan to highlight racism against black people in the United States did involve black gloves. "I didn't know what I was going to do with them," Smith added. "But I did know that they could be useful in what I needed to say."
However, as Smith and Carlos prepared to go out onto the track to receive their respective gold and bronze medals with silver medallist Norman, Carlos said he had forgotton his gloves. Norman suggested sharing.
"My glove ... was on the right hand. John's was on his left ... the gloves belong to me."
Such spectacular improvisation brought ramifications. Norman was reprimanded by the Australian Olympic Associaion. Avery Brundage, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), threatened to kick out the entire US track and field team if Smith and Carlos were not sent home for what he called a domestic political statement unfit for the apolitical, international forum of the Olympic Games. Smith and Carlos were dispatched.
Nearly six decades on, history has avenged the athletes and Brundage's reaction – though very much in keeping with Pierre de Courbentin's original concept of the Games – emits the stench of barbaric times.
But ever since de Courbentin and his cohorts established the IOC in 1894 and the modern Olympic Games in 1896, the Games have been infused with political grandstanding.
Berlin in 1936 was Adolf Hitler's blitz for Aryan purity. Forty odd years later, the American-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games in protest over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan emerged from President Jimmy Carter's waning political heft.
Brundage's administrative heir, Thomas Bach, faces the fallout from latterday savageries: a war between Russia and Ukraine as well as conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus will be able to participate in Paris under a neutral banner much to the chagrin of Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky who last year threatened to boycott the Games.
Challenges
Israeli competitors will also feature despite calls from the Palestinian Olympic Committee for them to be excluded.
But the inclusion merely adds another level of anxiety – the spectre of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre in which 11 Israelis were killed by Palestinian militants following an attack on the Olympic village.
"With regard to the security of the Israeli athletes, we have the full confidence in the French authorities," said Bach following a meeting of the IOC in Paris on the eve of the games.
"They're working very meticulously. They're working very professionally.
"The Israeli athletes since 1972 have taken their own additional security measures and they feel comfortable with this situation."
And with consummate ease, Bach declared himself satisfied that the Paris Games would be spectacular.
The sagacity of such self-basting will receive the initial waves of feedback after the official opening ceremony on 26 July. It will be the first to be held outside a stadium.
A six-kilometre stretch of the river Seine between Pont d'Austerlitz and the Pont d'Iena has been selected for a son-et-lumière extravaganza during which around 7,000 athletes will be ferried along in a flotilla of vessels past monuments such as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre and finish up at Trocadéro where the Eiffel Tower will provide the backdrop for the quintessential Parisian panorama.
All brilliant on paper but in the practice Thomas Jolly's choreographed pageant screams security and logistical nightmare. The original attendance figures were cut from 600,000 to 300,000. Around 45,000 police and security officers will monitor the course for the usual petty miscreants as well as serious nasty pieces of work.
Adventure
"It's been a fantastic adventure so far," said Tony Estanguet, who heads the Olympics organising committee.
"France has been waiting for 100 years for the Games to come back. It's a big responsibility and we have put a lot of energy and determination to make sure that it will be a fantastic edition of the event."
The first medals of the 2024 Games will be dished out on 27 July in the 10m air rifle mixed shooting and the distribution will continue in 329 disciplines across 31 other sports at the 35 Olympic venues until 11 August
Old faithfuls such as athletics and swimming will assuredly hog the headlines with their testosterone-fuelled posturing.
Games debutant breaking will inject freshness. B-Girls and B-Boys will whirl their wonders between 9 and 10 August at Place de la Concorde which will be the venue for the second appearance in the Olympics of the 3X3 basketball as well as the skateboarding.
Organisers who have been trumpeting their eco-friendly credentials over the reduced carbon footprint of the Games in comparison to recent editions in London and Tokyo, have also stressed its inclusivity.
Companies trying to keep goods and objects in circulation for as long as possible have been able to munch into the 6 billion-euro Olympic pie under programmes monitored by the Bangladeshi microfinance guru Muhammad Yunus.
The 11,000 seats made from recycled plastic in the Aquatics Centre in Saint Denis just to the north of Paris and the La Chapelle Arena a few miles further south have been provided by a local outfit Le Pavé.
Chance
Co-founder Marius Hamelot set up the firm in 2018 with childhood friend Jim Pasquet and Judith Sebban.
"I felt like the inauguration of the Aquatics Centre was the end of five years of hard work for this project," Hamelot told RFI.
"It was the end of a really important step for the company but I feel like there is so much to do still."
Yunus, who arrived in Paris from strife ridden Bangladesh with his daughter and grandson on Monday, to attend the opening ceremony, concurs. "For so long sporting events seemed to be taking from the people," said Yunus.
"But these events must be about the social and conventional markets coming together. These spectacles must have a social meaning,"
Efforts in that realm might mitigate the griping from the great unwashed. Complaints have flowed over the hike in transport costs, the reserved lanes on viciously clogged roads for the "Olympic family" and sealed-off sectors in neighbourhoods.
"What we've seen is a record uptake of tickets for events," countered Estanguet. "Thousands of people have offered to become volunteers. Millions have turned out to watch the passing of the Olympic flame even in places where there aren't any competitions. We remain confident that it will be a really popular celebration.
"Obviously we'll look at it again after the event. But at the moment all the indicators suggest that the French are up for the show."
Sixteen days of a summer will prove or destroy the claim.
