Goodbye to Paris 2024, the Games of light after the cold, pandemic silence of Tokyo, the reconciliation with the passion of sport, the festivities of a city of packed halls and stadiums, from Saint-Denis to Roland Garros, from La Défense to Le Bourget via the Place de la Concorde, the joyful, civilised people. It is the legacy of Paris, something of that summer magic of Barcelona 92, a rediscovery or a return to the origins. “An opportunity for humanity”, they call it, and for 16 days, a truce, everything seems possible. More than 70,000 people at the Stade de France and millions around the world yesterday said goodbye to an event that, due to its sporting, organisational and social success, once again disputes the honorary title of the best Games in history. Podium at least.
France is proud when Léon Marchand, dressed in an elegant suit, catches a drop of the Olympic flame near the floating cauldron in the Tuileries and makes his slow way along a dirt path. The flame is coming home. For two weeks, thousands of Parisians and tourists have been strolling at night near the illuminated Louvre, checking their phones for the time to see if it is 10pm and the Olympic fireball lights up, the 30-metre-high, 22-metre-diameter globe that surprises with its beauty and its slow ascent into the sky, with its yellow heat that comes from a seven-metre-wide ring. It is hard to believe that anything different could impress a city that is itself a monument, but Paris has fallen in love with the cauldron and does not want to let it go. The encapsulated fire begins its journey back to the stadium.
Paris has rediscovered itself, and even Marseille, with music provided by an orchestra on the athletics track and a voice from the dancing crowd, sounds different, a softer version of Viktor le Masne, more emotional, far from the martial and aggressive hymn of 1792. The representatives of the 205 delegations stroll through a labyrinth of bridges and corridors in the centre of the stadium, a puzzle of the continents. The golden boys of Spanish athletics, the walker María Pérez and the jumper Jordan Díaz, wave their flags, and France celebrates Antoine Dupont, rugby player, and the cyclist Pauline Ferrand, heroes of a country that is fifth in the medal table after the United States and China, tied with 40 golds, Japan and Australia, the pride of being the first European nation among the best. American swimmer Katie Ledecky, the Olympic swimmer with the most gold medals (nine), and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, another poster girl for these Games, are all smiles.
Tolga Akmen / POOL (EFE)
The water parade on the rainy Seine at the opening is now the traditional walk of the athletes, the usual scenes of little flags and mobile phones in hand, and the occasional hair dye for a successful bet. The American team points out the stars and stripes on their arms, the letters USA on their chests. Everyone dances in the discotheque at the Stade de France, closing the party to the tune of We are the champions. The last three athletes to receive the medal of the Games have a double prize. The women marathon runners, the Dutch Sifan Hassan, the Ethiopian Tigst Assefa and the Kenyan Hellen Obiri, winners on Sunday morning, are decorated by the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, and by Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, in front of the crowd.
The Games are the past, the embrace of the historic marathon, and also the future. From the sky of the stadium descends the golden traveller, a visitor who comes from a time yet to come, a time when the Olympic Games have disappeared, and who has travelled not on an invasive mission, as in alien films, but in search of knowledge. What is this Games, of which the ancients speak so much?, the man with the unknown face must ask himself. It is a flag of Greece that is given to the alien, who begins to understand, some Olympic rings that form in the sky, and there they remain, symbol of the united world, words of Pierre de Coubertin.
Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, once again touches on the national heartstrings by recalling the 16 gold medals won by the French delegation, a record surpassed by the 15 won in Atlanta 96, and Bach highlights gender equality as the legacy of Paris.
Mayor Anne Hidalgo hands over the Olympic flag to her colleague from Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and she, along with Simone Biles, speaks of the “global identity” of their city as a brand, and its logo is already a symbol of these new times of codes, numbers and letters, something short and at the bottom, LA28, as if it were a license plate, the A drawing an American flag. The show is Tom Cruise, who rappels down from the roof of the venue, grabs the Olympic flag and rides it on a motorcycle, as if it were the filming of Mission: Impossible. The film is the actor driving through the streets of Paris, and boarding a plane to Los Angeles, where he dresses the Hollywood sign on the iconic Mount Lee in Olympic colors. The legendary Michael Johnson runs through the streets of California and the skateboarding phenomenon Jagger Eaton does somersaults on Venice Beach, another nod to urban sports. If Paris has brought sport to the streets, skateboarding under the Obelisk, 3×3, climbing at Le Bourget, Los Angeles will be the sun, the sea. Snoop Dogg and Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing.
Léon Marchand has arrived at the stadium with the Olympic flame. Goodbye to Paris, his spell. Los Angeles has the path illuminated.
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