Team GB swap medals for moments as Paris leaves new Olympics blueprint
Paris 2024 delivered despite encountering problems, writes James Toney, with the handover to Los Angeles 2028 complete
All the travel books will tell you to avoid Paris in August - it’s too crowded, too hot and everything is shut.
Well, perhaps, these last two weeks have taught us to forget all those stereotypes about the French, with their smiling waiters, reliable public transport and cooling rain.
And as for their great summer tradition of strikes and riots, unfortunately that moved a little closer to home.
Whisper it quietly but Paris saw London 2012 and raised it, bringing the Olympics to the heart of the world’s most Instagrammable city. Wherever you hopped off the Metro a viral moment was just a short walk away.
Their opening ceremony left a little to be desired. You had to respect the ambition but four hours of interpretive dance, staged in pouring rain, couldn’t even be saved by a spectacular light show and Celine Dion.
But after the storm, came the sun, the sport and Snoop Dogg. They say you’re never far from the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Snoop lurked everywhere too.
Their closing night show played it a little more safe and a touch too melancholy, Olympic officials making it privately clear there were unhappy with some of the more risque elements of Thomas Jolly’s sodden opening night.
Athletes were honoured, volunteers were thanked, President Macron even got a small cheer, though if Leon Marchand wants to run for office, he’d win in a landslide, helping extinguish the flame at the Jardin des Tuileries.
Paris, that city of die-hard romantics, seems a rather fitting place to fall back in love with the Olympics, 12 years after London wrote their blueprint for success.
They’ve been relentlessly worrying about this fortnight here for seven years but they’ve been just what Macron needed, a temporary truce on the political divisiveness that remains his most pressing problem.
Jacques Chirac’s popularity peaked after France won the World Cup, Macron’s motorcade often swept into venues from the Elysees Palace just moments before another gold was won.
The reported cost of this two-week circus, remember the Paralympics are still to come, was £7.8 billion, the ‘cheapest’ summer Games in two decades. The biggest single cost was security, you were never far from a gendarmerie with a gun.
As ever the challenges comes with what’s next. Team GB - fuelled by crucial National Lottery investment - bucked a trend by winning more medals in the Games post-hosting in Rio but that’s no easy task for the French, who enjoyed their best medal return for 124 years.
These Games have been bon if not magnifique for Great Britain - only the United States and China won more medals than Team GB’s 65, though their 14 golds put them seventh on the medal table, outside their stated two targets - top five and top European nation.
“The Games isn’t just about medal success,” said triathlon gold medallist Alex Yee, who carried the British flag with gymnast Bryony Page at the closing ceremony. “If we’re achieving the same medals as London, I think that’s a hugely successful Games.”
Medals or moments, what comes first? For those who fund our sport then their millions of public money demands a return on investment measured in gold, silver and bronze.
But no-one watching at home is losing any sleep that Team GB got a few less gold medals than Australia, France or the Netherlands.
While some headlines will say this is their most disappointing return in 20 years, the facts behind the stats are not so binary.
Yes all that glittered was bronze, 29 third places was the most since 1908, when the Games started in April and finished in October.
But in total 40% of the team came medallists, more than Tokyo and 18 different sports contributed British podium spots.
We’ve become a bit too obsessed with golds, perhaps forgetting it’s just 28 years since Team GB returned from Atlanta with just one.
Remember these Games and it won’t just be golds but Andy Murray and Dan Evans’s improbable comeback in saving five match points, Amber Rutter’s dramatic penalty shoot-out for silver, Josh Kerr’s race for the ages with Cole Hocker and that Norwegian guy who talked quicker than he ran.
And then there’s Cindy Ngamba - still fighting for her British citizenship - winning the Refugee Team’s first medal with boxing bronze.
Some found themselves in the headlines for other reasons, would Imane Khelif swap the fortnight of bile she has endured for the gold she wore as she proudly carried the Algerian flag into the opening ceremony?
Would Australian breakdancer B-Girl Raygun rather have not become an Olympian if she knew the trolling she’d be on the end of for achieving something that 99.9% of the world can only dream about?
Besides, modern Olympic founder Pierre de Courbetin hated medal tables, a media invention that was banned by the Olympic Charter - and ignored by all - until just a few years ago.
The Olympics are a perfect ideal that are far from perfect and their guardians must reflect on their decision to allow convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde to compete and admit some accountability for the appalling treatment of boxer Khelif too.
But the show rolls on, from the City of Lights to the City of Angels.
The handover ceremony made it clear that Los Angeles will be big, brash and super-sized, these Games of chic and elan couldn’t be more different but are no easy act to follow.
Watch every moment of Olympic Games Paris 2024 live only on discovery+, the streaming home of the Olympics
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