Paris prepares for 100-day countdown, looking to rediscover flame for Games

PARIS » In Paris’ outskirts, a bright-eyed young girl is eager for the Olympic and Paralympic Games to end.

That’s because the swimming club where 10-yearold Lyla Kebbi trains will inherit an Olympic pool. It will be dismantled after the Games and trucked from the Olympic race venue in Paris’ high-rise business district to Sevran, a Paris-area town with less glitter and wealth. There, the pieces will be bolted back together and — voila ! — Kebbi and her swim team will have a new Olympic-sized pool to splash around in.

“It’s incredible !” she says. “I hope it’s going to bring us luck,” adds her mother, Nora.

In 100 days as of Wednesday, the Paris Olympics will kick off with a wildly ambitious waterborne opening ceremony. But the first Games in a century in France’s capital won’t be judged for spectacle alone. Another yardstick will be their impact on disadvantaged Paris suburbs, away from the city-center landmarks that are hosting much of the action.

By promising socially positive and also less polluting and less wasteful Olympics, the city synonymous with romance is also setting itself the high bar of making future Games generally more desirable.

Critics question their value for a world grappling with climate warming and other emergencies. Potential host cities became so Games-averse that Paris and Los Angeles were the only remaining candidates in 2017 when the International Olympic Committee selected them for 2024 and 2028, respectively.

After scandals and the $13 billion cost of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, unfulfilled promises of beneficial change for host Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi tarnished by Russian doping and President Vladimir Putin’s subsequent land grabs in Ukraine, the Switzerland-based IOC has mountains of skepticism to dispel.

Virtuous Summer Games in Paris could help the longterm survival of the IOC’s mega-event.

The idea that the July 26-Aug. 11 Games and Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympics should benefit disadvantaged communities in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris was built from the outset into the city’s plans.

Paris-bound Olympians look forward to fans at Games

NEW YORK » The biggest races, routines and games for many of this generation’s Olympic athletes were contested in front of mostly empty stands, largely devoid of coaches to help them out or friends and family to cheer them on.

That was three years ago at the COVID-19 Summer Olympics and two years ago at the COVID-19 Winter Olympics. Now that they’re preparing for the Paris Olympics that begin in July — and a return to something that feels normal — the Americans heading back to the Games know they can never take for granted the screaming fans and a hug from Mom or Dad.

“I think it’s super important to be able to share these massive moments with people you care about,” said BMX rider Alise Willoughby, who has been to the last three Olympics.

Willoughby and about 100 other U.S. athletes are doing interviews and photo shoots this week at the Team USA media summit at a hotel in Times Square — an event that itself was made impossible in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

One topic of conversation this week is how grateful the bikers, rowers, gymnasts and the rest are to be past the days of contact tracing, quarantines and daily swabbing or spitting for COVID-19 tests inside the socalled Olympic bubble.

In Paris, there will be celebrations with relatives and one-on-one contact with coaches, most of whom were not allowed into the venues three years ago. The USA House — a traditional stop for athletes to wind down and kick back, especially after they’re done competing — will be doing brisk business once again.

Mostly, athletes are looking forward to the chance to soak in the feeling from the crowd, an element sorely missing in the cavernous and largely unfilled venues in Tokyo.

“I’ll be able to see the audience’s emotions. I want to build that with them and I can tailor my routines to that,” said American rhythmic gymnast Evita Griskenas, who plans French music to accompany one routine and “All-American” number for another, all with the goal of getting fans caught up in the moment.

Griskenas said she already feels a different vibe. Preparing for the Olympics in Tokyo — Games that were initially delayed by a year, then held in an atmosphere nobody quite recognized — became a largely solitary, and joyless, affair.