Editorial of the “World”. After Tokyo, the Olympic flag has been flying since Monday on the forecourt of the Paris City Hall, formalizing the choice of the French capital for the next summer Olympic Games (OG), which will open in just three years, July 26, 2024. For Paris, which has not hosted the Games since 1924, but also for France, which has only organized them five times since their rebirth in 1894, this countdown now launched represents a considerable series of challenges .
Planetary spotlight on a prestigious country threatened with decline and on its capital which still inspires dreams all over the world, popular support for a large sports machinery at a time of localism and sobriety, promotion of Seine-Saint-Denis , the youngest and most cosmopolitan department in France… The Paris Olympics are an exceptional opportunity, not only to showcase the country and its diversity, but also to inspire and bring together French people who are suffering from health anxiety. division and withdrawal.
More prosaically, the success of the Paris Games presupposes that the projects planned to welcome them with dignity are completed in good time, and that the French athletes shine there, confirming the mobilizing role of such a deadline for national sport. However, regrets or concerns are emerging on these two levels.
A bitter failure
While the main new constructions, such as the Arena at Porte de La Chapelle, in Paris, as well as the athletes’ village and the aquatic center in Saint-Denis, emerge from the ground on time, the delay in the construction of the news metro lines that must serve Le Bourget forced the organizers to review the location of certain competitions and a press center. While the Parisian agglomeration has been pawing for more than a decade to organize the Games and that the service of the northern suburbs by the Grand Paris Express is crucial for the inhabitants, it is a bitter failure.
As for the hoped-for harvest of medals for France, it appears anything but certain. Certainly, the performances of French sportsmen in Tokyo in basketball, handball and volleyball represent an unprecedented feat. Let the French shine in this “BHV” triptych, these sports widely practiced in schools and in clubs, is a tribute to teachers of physical education and sports and to volunteers. It is also a breath of fresh air for thousands of sports associations which have suffered from the health crisis.
However, the triumph of French “sports co” is the tree that hides the forest. Failures in athletics, swimming, boxing and cycling failed to achieve the “Forty medals “ hoped for by Emmanuel Macron at the opening of the Tokyo Games. With 33 awards, France ranks eighth in the medal table, far behind the United Kingdom – 65 medals – which has asserted itself since the Beijing Games in 2008 as the main European Olympic power.
While the British sporting model favors the elite and medal-winning sports, the French give priority to the practice of sport for all. But the French successes accumulated in indoor sports such as handball, where professionalization has increased in France, invite reflection. Three years before the Paris Games, it is time to learn the lessons of Tokyo’s lackluster success.