Paris 2024 Reflections
It is difficult to reflect on our experience at Paris 2024 without sounding like one of the cliched news reports that accompany the end of the games. The IOC president said it was ‘sensational’. I’ve not heard the ‘best games ever’ term being used yet, but in truth how do you compare? It certainly was a fabulous experience.
There is a stereotype of the French that the British have long held; arrogant, a bit aloof, not really all that friendly. This event firmly put paid to all of that. One of the best things about the organisation was the hordes of volunteer helpers with their giant foam fingers pointing us in the right direction. They appear to have been briefed to create a sense of joie de vivre. Sometimes there would be one of them sat on a high chair greeting the various nationalities with good cheer and humour. On other occasions they formed a guard of honour to wave au revoir to the leaving crowds or lead the singing and dancing of the victors. Even the police, who were there in large numbers wearing their Joe 90 style hats for a bit of comic relief from their machine guns, joined in the fun. Well at times they did. Mainly they stood around in large groups chatting, smoking and working out how much they were making from the overtime.
There seemed to be various types of police in attendance, together with the army and a lot of big burly security guards. The latter’s job was to look in your bag, make you take a sip of any water you were carrying and give you a friendly pat down. The level of security was high but comforting and evidently successful.
Other elements of the planning and organisation were also excellent. The Paris public transport system is known to be extensive, if not always comfortable, but an Olympic signage overlay made it easy to navigate. And if in doubt there was always a friendly volunteer ready and willing to brandish a foam finger. A dedicated Paris 2024 travel app was really helpful – one of three apps designed to support the games. The ticketing app worked perfectly and the main event app was packed with useful information and live updates of all events. Whoever did the digital planning and execution did an amazing job.
And so to the sport. We went to the hockey where somehow we found ourselves with seats right on the half way line, sat amongst a sea of orange. As you probably know that was the Dutch, from the Netherlands, who chanted for Holland. Actually the Dutch/Netherlanders/Hollanders were the most prominently represented nation at the games. Possibly it just felt that way because they all wear orange. Except the ones in white with orange trim which we were told were the ones who bought late, after all the orange had sold out. Regardless, they are very good at hockey.
We learned a new sport in water polo which we really enjoyed and ended up going to three sessions including the Aussie women winning the silver medal (sounds better than losing the final!) and the Serb men winning the gold. I was expecting the Serbs v the Croats to get a bit feisty, but it was no more so than any of the other games, all of which were a bit like a school yard scrap. Or a school swimming pool scrap I suppose.
The sporting highlights for Tracy and I were the two evenings we had at the Stade de France. Athletics is like no other sporting event, being in effect a variety of different events all intermingled and playing out over the course of the session. We bought tickets for the last two nights so that all events would be finals. (The eye watering prices of the tickets is probably the only criticism I would have of the whole thing). Supporting both Australia and Team GB, the closest we got to seeing a gold were the silvers won by Jess Hull in the 1500m and the GB women’s 4x100m relay team. We did adopt New Zealand as being close enough and thereby missed out on a gold on the Friday night only by the German woman shot putter’s last put. All came good on Saturday when Hamish, the New Zealand high jumper (who must surely be Scottish and hence British) won the gold in a jump off. His spontaneous run around the field and collapse in the javelin area, which thankfully had just finished being used, was the most joyous of moments.
Our trip to Paris 2024 came off the back of a week of news centred on a few so-called right-wing extremists targeting immigrants in the UK. Just once every four years the negative news cycle gets interrupted by this reminder to the world that 99% of people are law abiding, fun loving and respectful of all nationalities, colours and creeds. Sport does that, the Olympics does that, and it was a joy to be there to experience it.
Comments
Post a Comment