Lit in Olympia on April 16, travelling on the 130-year-old, three-masted barque Belem from Athens to Marseilles, the Olympic flame reached France on May 8, and from there, made its way slowly up north to Paris. Everywhere it passed, it brought smiles. Almost as a harbinger of joy, a much welcome feeling in a country derailed by surprise parliamentary elections only a few weeks ago. On Bastille Day, the Olympic flame arrived in Paris on horseback, proudly carried by Colonel Thibault Vallette, gold medal equestrian at the Rio Games of 2016. There followed two days of frantic sightseeing for the flame. If only it could talk and give us its impressions.
Among other highlights, the flame was paraded by a beaming Thierry Henry while jogging down the Champs-Elysées. It was later held high by Paris ballerinas from Bastille to the Louvre museum, where the former étoile dancer of the Paris Opéra, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, took it to see the Mona Lisa and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. From there, to the Sorbonne and then Notre-Dame where firemen who saved the cathedral from the blaze in 2019 brandished the flame with panache. My heart melted twice, first, when the Moulin Rouge belles danced the French Cancan for the flame right in the middle of Pigalle, and then when it entered Victor Hugo’s house, in the heart of the Marais. The flame visiting France’s eternal glories is a beautiful thing to see.
There is something about seeing the Olympic flame jogging past you that soothes the soul and calms the nerves. A welcome interlude in Parisians’ lives after months, if not years, of works in the streets of the capital in preparation for the Games. Parisians needed it, and badly. “It’s so good to smile again,” said the waiter at café Saint Regis on the tip of the Île Saint-Louis, overlooking Notre-Dame’s flying buttresses.
The last few weeks have been gruelling for many Parisians as they have had to negotiate de-routing, re-routing and avoid 11 metro stations which are now closed (some of them until October). Not to mention entire bridges closed to the traffic, and sometimes even to pedestrians, transformed as they are into rows of tiered seats for the opening ceremony. The traffic at crossroads is often so intense that Parisians have had to wait for at least 30 minutes to hop on their bus, instead of the usual five. One thing in particular has irritated them to no end: having to walk for miles as if caged in, behind 6ft fences — 44,000 of them to be precise. “It looks like a prison,” said a small child as I attempted to find an exit somewhere along the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the 5th arrondissement. Nobody had been warned it seems, not even local mayors, such as Jean-Pierre Lecoq of the very chic 6th arrondissement, who discovered them one morning like everybody else. “I had never been told,” he said.
Parisians with buggies and in wheelchairs have had a particularly tough time on the now fenced pavements. Shopkeepers and café owners are also impacted. “Café terraces behind bars are not exactly inviting, are they?” says a waiter in Rue Dauphine. Not to mention receiving deliveries.
And since July 18, the heart of the city, where the opening ceremony will be taking place, is a “grey zone”, forbidden to all unless you live there and have a pass. Needless to say café and restaurant owners and shopkeepers are in despair, most of them closed for at least a week, and those still open have the greatest difficulty getting deliveries. They will get compensation, of course, just like during Covid. It is France after all. Did I also mention the ugly 5G antennas at every corner, the 65 giant screens, 1,137 portable loos and 169 sound amplifiers? “It is the first time the Olympic Games are organised in the heart of a city, and it may be the last! Honestly, if this doesn’t wreck Paris, I’d be surprised” Philippe, a teacher at Jussieu university, told me, sombrely. He will avoid the Games at all costs.
Indeed, except for sport addicts who managed to get tickets at an affordable price (which must be an Olympic discipline in itself), I don’t know one Parisian who will stay for the Games. It is not out of loathing for them, more out of fear that something may not go exactly as planned, and perhaps, just like people abroad, they want to see the beautiful competitions on television where the view is always superb and the close ups on the action unbeaten.
They want to enjoy the Games without the daily logistical hassle and the back kitchen horrors.
However, all is not doom and gloom. The wonders of the Olympics are often found in small and unexpected details. Last week, Parisians crossing the river could see the river brigade and subaquatic security forces (yes, there is such a thing) performing mock operations. Speed boats fitting only six special agents each were having the time of their lives, or so it looked to all perched on the bridge, intrigued by their risky manoeuvres. Going at high speed, they rehearsed jumping on barges and big boats in choreographed rescue operations. They will not only have to deal with potential terrorist threats but also save enthusiastic members of the public who might accidentally fall into the water. There will be 30 expert divers and 30 river rescuers at all times present by the banks.
Now, after much agonising about the possibility of swimming in the Seine, and €1.4 billion spent since 2015 to build colossal filtering stations, treatment plants and storm basins, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo finally fulfilled her promise and dived into the Seine last Wednesday. She showed off her crawling skills in front of hundreds of cameras. Let’s just hope the level of pollution, very variable and difficult to foresee, will be low enough for the swimming competitions.
One lives in hope. Allez, “Vive les Jeux!”
