“So that’s it. The sweaty, smelly, chic, spectacular, illuminated and triumphant Paris Games are over,” cries the British daily. The Guardian in a farewell letter to the French capital. The day after a closing ceremony deemed “spectacular” by NBC, the foreign press said goodbye to an edition that “wins the honorary title of the best Games in history,” says Spanish El Pais.
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“For 15 days, Paris was a party,” is the title the Swiss daily newspaper Le Temps – an “enchanted interlude in the depressing news”. Because before “putting it in everyone’s teeth” as described The Montreal JournalParis 2024, long criticized for its management of the homeless, the state of the Seine or its transport offer, was also threatened. “After the Olympics, the hangover of the French could be phenomenal,” warned El Pais on July 31, in reference to the political situation in the country in the aftermath of the legislative elections.
“It’s easy to be yourself when you’re great.”
It is the same daily newspaper that is backpedaling this Monday, August 12. “For 16 days, during this truce, anything is possible,” he summarizes. Like organizing an opening ceremony on the Seine, or watching a fencing match under the nave of the Grand Palais. Using its own assets as a backdrop, Paris has gone for something new.
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“There was nothing ambitious about these Games. There were no multi-million dollar mega-constructions, the French did not destroy or raze any neighbourhoods,” marvels the Guardian, recalling that “the Chinese, the English and the Brazilians had all used the Games as an exercise in proving what they could be. The French, resolutely reconciled with themselves, do not seem to seek to project anything other than what they already are. It is easy to be yourself, of course, when you know how great you are.”
Swimming in the Seine, housing… Games with multiple legacies
Could France be the first not to have misinterpreted the motto “Cititus, Altitus, Fortius” (Faster, Stronger, Higher)? Probably, according to Le Temps, which denounces the “megalomaniacal drift” of Paris 2024’s predecessors. “The City of Lights has shown that simple tubular stands – which ring when spectators stamp their feet on the ground – can do the trick. You just have to put them in the right places.”
Despite this interest in the ephemeral, the flame does not go out without leaving a legacy. The “greater and more significant in the long term” according to the New York Timesis undoubtedly the decontamination of the Seine, a 1.4 billion euro project that “only the Games can inspire” he writes, while Anne Hidalgo has promised that it will be possible to bathe regularly in the river from next summer.
For the territories, “the most lasting benefits of the Games will be felt by Seine-Saint-Denis, the sprawling and less photogenic suburb that is synonymous in France with poverty, immigration or crime. One of only two permanent sports buildings erected for the Games stands here: the magnificent aquatic centre […] Next year, it is expected to open as a community centre. Thanks to the Olympic Village, more than 2,800 homes (a quarter of which will be social housing) are also expected to be made available to around 6,000 beneficiaries.
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The drive rekindled
According to the Journal de Montréal, the legacy of the Olympic Games could even transcend borders, and help countries “believe that hosting the Games is not such a bad idea”, while only one city – Brisbane – was in the running to organize the 2032 edition. For the most convinced, the challenge to be met will be all the more significant.
Because despite an opening ceremony tinged with controversy and a “protocol and predictable” closing show, according to the Portuguese daily Publicomany people think that Paris has set the bar very high. But rather than overshadow it, El Pais wants to believe that thanks to France, “Los Angeles already has the path illuminated.”
