During the 2024 Olympics, crowds from Paris to Tahiti have surprised even themselves with their enthusiasm for two and a half weeks of sports
PARIS (AP) — In French, there are no goodbyes.
Instead, Olympic crowds from Paris to the surfing venue in Tahiti were saying “au revoir” — see you again — as the 2024 Games drew to a close Sunday.
After the 100-year wait since Paris' last Games, no one can say when France's capital and the Olympics will next embrace. But this much is certain: They're both emerging changed — in some ways for the better — from their summer romance.
There were uplifting stories galore for non-French fans, too. Quite literally in the case of Armand Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter who broke his own world record in winning Olympic gold.
Rain drenched VIPs and fans alike but didn't dampen the wacky and wonderful opening ceremony. Its displays of LGBTQ+ pride and French humor were too much for some: Donald Trump and French bishops were among those who took offense.
Still, like all good romances, the Paris-Olympics affair left fans yearning for more. That couldn't be said of all Games of late.
So, too, did the wastefulness and corruption of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro that made authorities in Paris determined to do things differently.
The results were evident. The Paris Games weren't perfect — can flying thousands of athletes across the world ever be with the climate in crisis? But the French capital provided new examples of how the Olympics can be improved.
Also gone? Expensive new venues that don't get used much, or at all, once the Olympics have left town. Paris instead widely used existing or temporary arenas.
Marchand and other swimmers raced in a came-as-a-kit pool that will be dismantled and rebuilt in a Paris-area town where kids can't wait to splash around in it. Breaking (another innovation) and other urban sports played out on Concorde Plaza, where French revolutionaries removed King Louis XVI’s head.
When the lawns have grown back, there will mostly be only memories of other temporary arenas where archery, equestrian events and other sports looked as glamorous as Paris catwalk shows, set against iconic backdrops.
The Eiffel Tower, Versailles Palace, the domed Grand Palais (turned into a breathtaking arena for fencing and taekwondo) and other monuments became Olympic stars in their own right. The use of Paris' cityscape showed that the Olympics can — and should — adapt to their hosts, not the other way around.
The northern suburb of Paris is mainland France's poorest region and had such a shortage of pools that many of its kids can't swim. Regional leader Stéphane Troussel told The Associated Press that thanks to Games-related refurbishments and newly built swim centers that teams used for Olympic training, much of Seine Saint-Denis has now largely caught up — in pools at least — with better-off parts of France.
But the city's ambitions flirted at times with an excess of zeal.
Making triathletes and marathon swimmers do something that many Parisians recoil at themselves — plunge into the murky Seine River— proved problematic. Its waters were repeatedly deemed too dirty for training swims and forced a postponement of the men's triathlon — moved to the same day as the women's race, near the majestic Pont Alexandre III.
French authorities also made unprecedentedly broad use of discretionary powers under an anti-terror law to keep hundreds of people, often minorities, they deemed to be potentially dangerous away from the biggest event modern France has ever organized. The use of AI-assisted surveillance also fueled critics' complaints that the Games are leaving an unwanted legacy of police repression.
Still, the joyful crowds showed that the popular verdict was more positive than negative. The organizers' slogan was "Games Wide Open.” Seeing such happiness on streets that felt so unsafe when al-Qaida and Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers sowed terror in 2015 seemed to complete Paris' long recovery.
After the Paralympics from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, normal life will resume. But the Games will keep ringing in Paris.
The cathedral’s rector, Rev. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, said the bell will hang in the roof above the altar and be rung whenever Mass is celebrated.
The chimes will serve as lasting reminders of the Games' “extraordinary atmosphere” and Olympic-inspired “unity of the French people that was very beautiful,” he said.
“This bell will be the sign of how these Games have left an imprint on France," Dumas said. “That really makes me happy.”
Paris-based correspondent John Leicester has reported for AP from 10 Summer and Winter Olympics.