Paris aims to make the Olympics more desirable
In Paris’ outskirts, a brighteyed young girl is eager for the Olympic and Paralympic Games to end.
That’s because the swimming club where 10year-old Lyla Kebbi trains will inherit an Olympic pool. It will be dismantled after the Games and trucked from the Olympic race venue in Paris’ highrise 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.
In 100 days as of Wednesday, the Paris Olympics will kick o« with a wildly ambitious waterborne opening ceremony. But the rst 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-centre 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.
After scandals and the $13 billion cost of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, unfullled promises of benecial 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 scepticism to dispel. Virtuous Summer Games in Paris could help the long-term survival of the IOC’s mega-event.
The idea that the July 26Aug. 11 Games and Aug. 28Sept. 8 Paralympics should benet disadvantaged communities in the SeineSaint-Denis region.
For Seine-Saint-Denis kids facing racial discrimination and other barriers, sports are sometimes a route out. World Cup winner Kylian Mbappé honed his silky football skills as a boy in the Seine-Saint-Denis town of Bondy. Once heavily industrialised, it became grim and scary in parts after many jobs were lost. Rioting rocked its streets in 2005 and again last year. Concretely, the Games will leave a legacy of new and refurbished sports infrastructure in Seine-Saint-Denis.