You can sense the fire and ambition in Paris as the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad draws close. It’s on the faces of the athletes, and the lips of those running the show. But there’s something even more fundamental too: a yearning for the Olympics to be spectacular and carefree again. It’s been a while. But after the corruption-soaked chaos of Rio, and the crowd-free Ghost Games of Tokyo, the hope is that Paris will rekindle an old flame. As Étienne Thobois, Paris 2024’s chief executive, puts it: “We want a huge party. And we want that party to be extraordinary.”
It will certainly start with a bang. As the sun goes down over Paris, a flotilla of boats carrying thousands of athletes will set off down the Seine, cheered on by hundreds of thousands of spectators – 220,000 of whom will be watching for free. If all goes to plan, the athletes will then travel a 6km route along the river, past the city’s most famous attractions while watching what organisers say will be a “unique multi-sensory spectacle”.
