Ticket to watch Simone Biles at the Arena Bercy: €648 (£550). Ticket to watch the men’s 100m final at the Stade de France: €980. Ticket to watch some of the world’s greatest cyclists racing around one of the world’s great monuments in one of the world’s great cities: gratuit. No QR codes. No searches. No private security sentinels checking your bag and asking you to drink your water to make sure it is, in fact, water.
Which is not to say that your admission to the men’s cycling road race on the Butte Montmartre is going to be painless. For one thing, there are the hundreds of steps you will have to negotiate from Abbesses metro station, a physical trial that will have you reaching at frequent intervals for Jens Voigt’s favourite maxim (“shut up, legs”). Then there are the queues and the crowds, the countless extra minutes that Google Maps does not calculate. But – after a fashion – here you are, on the slopes of the Sacre-Coeur basilica, ready for a feast of pain and pleasure.
