2024 OLYMPICS IN PARIS PART 2

2024 OCTOBER ISSUE

2024 OLYMPICS IN PARIS
PART 2

Written by ANDREW SIA

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From the Desk of the Publisher

At the writing of this article, the Paris Olympics Game is only three weeks away. We have noticed that the French organizers have put in a great deal of effort to meet with the lowest carbon emissions. It is set to follow the London’s 2012 Olympics Game standard. London originally meant to spend £3.3 billion, but ended up with £8.8 billion. And yet a report from the House of Commons said that the 2012 games had already generated £14.2 billion in economic value for the U.K. by 2014.

Paris put the budget on carbon and attentions has been given on buildings, and eco-friendly cement and wood has been used to construction accommodations for the athletes. Paris has vowed to be the host of the most green-consciousness Olympics in history. It will not only be observing financial budgeting but also strict carbon budgeting.

Paris aims to cut total emissions by half, comparing with London and Rio de Janeiro Games in 2012 and 2016 respectively.

For the food menu, food materials have been redesign to avoid emissions as well. The use of vegetables and local supply, with 80% ingredients coming from France.

In 2015 when Paris hosted the COP21 climate summit, 200 countries joined and agreed for limiting global temperature rising to keep 2° C above pre-industrial levels. That same year, Paris bid for the hosting of the Olympic games.

Wind and solar power will be used and organizers have contracted 100% renewable energy during the sport events.

Organizers have discourage the visitors to travel by air to Paris. The use of other forms of transportation are encouraged.

We are going to watch the Paris Olympic Games online and would be happy for the French if they can set up all the milestones.

Lastly, we want to quote our last paragraph in this writing and share it here:

“We wish wholeheartedly all the success to the French organizer and its government for hosting this important international sports event. May it be carried out safely and proved once again that there is hope in our world even we have experienced so many things lately.”

Introduction

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris which will be held from July 26 to August 11, 2026. This piece of article was written on July 1, and it is only 25 days away, less than a month so to speak. Already the interior ministry is alerting the Parisians regarding the security perimeter of the city and the QR code they would need to have access to the large areas in the city during the Olympic Games. This message has come continuously through the mobile phones in high-pitched alert that annoy the Parisians.

We have noticed almost all the landmarks of the City of Paris have been taken up for Olympic Games:

The Place de la Concorde, has turned into an urban park where 25,000 blue plastic seats can host the crowd for skateboarding, BMX cycling, break dance, and basketball. Its fountains and lamp-posts have been crated to protect them from damage.
And not far away, the 124-year-old Pont Alexandre III, a gilded bridge over the Seine, where bleachers for the Opening Ceremony have been set up. It will be followed by swimming, triathlon and cycling at its finishing line.
Eiffel Tower will host athletics, cycling beach volleyball, wrestling and judo.
Les Invalides where archery, cycling at the starting line, and athletics will be held.
Hôtel de Ville and Louvre, where athletics will be hosted.
In Accor Arena, trampoline, gymnastics and basketball will be held.
In the Aquatics Center, water polo, diving and trampoline will be held.
Stade de France, we can find rugby and athletics.
In Adidas Arena, badminton and gymnastic will be held.
Parc des Princes will host both men and women matches and finals for football, along with Stade de Bordeaux in Bordeaux; Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes; Stade de Lyon in Lyon; Stade de Marseille in Marseille, Stade de Nice in Nice and Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Etienne.
North Paris Arena in Villepinte and Roland-Garros Stadium in the 16th arondissement will host boxing. The North Paris Arena has a capacity of 6,000 spectators will host early stages of all competitions. Roland-Garros Stadium is an iconic tennis venue built in 1928 and will also host tennis and boxing, both semifinals and finals. It has a capacity of 14,962 seats.

This gives you whereabouts all the games will be held.

TFC | Paris 2024 Olympic Venues

Courtesy of: Paris 2024 Olympic Venues by TFC | YouTube Video | Jul 19, 2024 | 10:04

Challenges of the Past Olympic Games

Many of us may not know how high the stakes are for those Olympics. They are far higher than the inconvenience they have brought to the host countries. The games may last only for three weeks. The Olympic Games are held every four years, with the Summer and Winter Olympics alternating every two years. The four-year period is known as an Olympiad. The Summer Olympics are held during the first year of Olympiad, and the Winter Olympics are held in the third year.

Over the past decade, the reputation of the Olympics has been tainted, instead of delivering a global sports event every two years, its recent history has been spoiled.

From 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the Russians have been caught by doping scandal. The 2016 Olympics in Brazil was surrounded by budget overruns.

In 2020, it was caught by the global pandemic, the host country Tokyo deferred it to the following year and it was held under an intense COVID-19 protocols.

In the 2022, the Winter Olympics was held in Beijing from February 4 to 20, where Putin from Russia went to Beijing to meet with China’s Xi Jinping. Both of them pledged their allegiance to one another and followed by Putin’s invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. During that Olympics, we found empty arenas with Xi’s net-zero COVID policy which was the result of an autocratic regime.

This time for Paris, it has seen the event return to Paris for a third time after a century. The first time when Paris hosted the games in 1900, it took five months to complete. Its second time was in 1924 where it was the first to be broadcasted over the radio, marking the first live coverage of a multi-national, multi-sporting event. It was also the legendary of “Chariots of Fire”, a true story of the two British athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice.

Challenges of the Paris Olympic Games

Paris Olympics 2024 comes with its own set of concerns. The prolong threat of a terrorist attack; a transit system that isn’t prepared to absorb the increased traffic, and the possibility of labor unrest. On the whole, for France to host this major sporting events would still be viable to the general opinion.

In 2017 when both Paris and Los Angeles were bidding for the hosting of the Olympic 2024, the International Olympic Committee decided to award the two Summer Olympics to Paris for the 2024, and Los Angeles for 2028. It was a rare occasion that the decisions were made for the two consecutive Olympic Games and it was accepted. We read that Brisbane is set to host Olympics in 2032.

Especially after several Olympics that went overbudgeted, the one in Beijing in 2008 ran into the excesses of $40 billion, but it was the extravaganza of the Communist China which would have been expected. But the one in Sochi for $50 billion, again another communist state, this time the Russian communist. Then Tokyo spent more than $20 billion, and this time the one in Paris promised to trim down the cost wherever it can. The idea was to bring something closer to what London spent in 2012, and the total cost has agreed to stay within $10 billion.

Swimming in the water in the river Seine has been prohibited for more than a century. But this time, not only the athletes are going to sail on barge down the Seine in the Opening Ceremony, they would also send athletes into the river for the triathlon and open-water swimming events. Whether the Seine will be clean enough has been questionable as last summer it was found to have a high concentration of bacteria in the water. Since then the city has built an underground storage tank for wastewater. As long as Paris doesn’t receive heavy downpour in July, the river should be safe to swim in.

Audiences for the Paris Olympic Games

Already over a million tickets have been sold for people who would want to attend the Paris Olympic Games. There are more than 10,000 athletes traveling to France. There are more people, can be in the billions, who would be watching the games from home.

Paris would know how to use its city’s advantage to make every shot designed like a postcard. All the sport venues have been using the iconic landmarks as the backdrop. Shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Champs-Elysées have always been the city’s attractions.

The French organizer even put a beach volleyball stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, a copy of Rio Olympic on the picturesque sands of Copacabana.

They promised a powerful, spectacular and dazzling international event and show the country’s image, about its tourism and shopping destination.

With Los Angeles and Brisbane under the wing waiting to take off, both countries are following closely Paris and to learn how to do it in terms of sustainability. It is a lesson for climate and circular economy initiatives in action.

Paris Olympics Interlude

The 2024 Paris Olympics has created 21 firsts in Olympic history:

For the first time, there will be no main Olympic venue.
For the first time, the opening ceremony was held outdoors.
For the first time, opening ceremony is free of charge.
For the first time, contestants enter the venue by boat.
For the first time, air conditioning is not provided in the athletes’ dormitories.
For the first time, athletes were charged for renting air conditioners.
For the first time, the French borrowed police from other countries due to insufficient police force.
For the first time, an anti-fraud mobile application is launched to facilitate foreigners to be wary of fraudsters in the host country.
For the first time, iron is used as the main material of gold medals.
For the first time, athletes will not be provided with special vehicles, only buses.
For the first time, a minimalist Olympic press conference room is adopted. There will not even have enough stools for reporters, so they have to sit on the floor.
For the first time, vegetarian food become a staple diet for athletes.
The first game is approaching, and airport employees and police are threatening to go on strike.
The first competition is approaching and the stadium has not been completed yet.
For the first time, a participating country is bringing its own chef team.
For the first time, men are allowed to participate in synchronized swimming.
It is the first Summer Olympics and Paralympics used the same emblem.
A “carbon budget” was established for the first time, and the carbon emissions of the entire event is controlled at 1.58 million tons for emissions.
For the first time, breakdancing is included in the Olympics.
For the first time, a new purple track is being used at the main stadium.
For the first time, the number of male and female athletes was 1:1, with a total of 10,500 athletes, 5,250 men and women each.

Scenario of the French Voting

While the Paris Olympic Games is at its countdown, at this moment we didn’t expect earlier on that the French President Emmanuel Macron would have announced on June 9 that he was dissolving the National Assembly and resulted the far right’s landslide victory in the European elections. The election for France’s lower house of parliament, conducted over the two rounds, June 30 and July 7, 2024, of which the first round 11 million French people voted for the far-right Rassemblement National Party on June 30.

President Macron’s gamble went terribly wrong. His dissolve of the parliament without consulting the leaders of the three parties in his centrist Ensemble alliance proved his arrogance. His alliance has been crushed and he is likely to lose as many as two-third of its seats.

It has entered into the post-Macron era and will fracture the presidential election in 2027. Macron will become a lame duck.

The far-right Rassemblement National Party is not assured of an absolute majority in the second round voting and its party leader, Marine Le Pen only mentioned that victory was not secure.

With this political instability prior to the Paris Olympics, which is an international event, it would take away the luster from the French government which can be the most unfortunate.

At our writing before we send for the publication, we have noted the following.

In France – On Sunday, June 9, the French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called for election of the French lower house of parliament to be held over the two rounds—Sunday, June 30, and Sunday, July 7. He took the action without any consultation with the leaders of the three parties in his centrist Ensemble alliances, which shocked everyone. All these upheaval took place even though the Paris Olympics will be held from July 26 to August 11.

The second round of this parliamentary election resulted in a hung parliament as the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire (NVP) needs a coalition with possible candidates for the position of prime minister in 2027. They plan to put their radical tax and spending program into action, increase minimum wage, make pension reforms, block the prices of essential goods, and make school truly free again. The foreseeable high costs of these measures would be paid through tax rises.

Now French President Emmanuel Macron must decide who to ask to form the government based on the result of the July 7 results, which is because no single alliance has gained an absolute majority of 289 seats, namely, more than 50% of the constituency total of 577 seats.

With the votes counted from the NFP at 182, Ensemble at 166, the far-right Rassemblement National at 143, and Les Républicains at 45, Macron doesn’t have too many choices.

We wish wholeheartedly all the success to the French organizer and its government for hosting this important international sports event. May it be carried out safely and proved once again that there is hope in our world even we have experienced so many things lately.

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