Are we capable of securing the country for two weeks? And of fighting against hackers? And of operating the metro? And of not blowing the planned budget? For months, observers of good faith, including L’Express, have wondered about the French capacity to brave the challenges of organizing these Olympic Games, sometimes resembling the twelve labors of Hercules. Sensitive issues managed with great efficiency… with a few exceptions. Overview.
Security: Terrorists well contained
December 1, 2023. At the Pullman Hotel in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris, Laurent Nunez, the Paris police prefect, and Michel Cadot, the interministerial delegate for the Olympic Games, give their big oral presentation to the IOC members. Is there a plan B for the opening ceremony? What if there are drone attacks? The two officials have an answer for everything, and the Olympic committee is reassured.
For months, at the Ministry of the Interior, meetings and rehearsals followed one another. The invitation system was adapted to the opening ceremony, drone attacks were simulated, and lists of volunteers and delegations were examined. 770,000 administrative investigations were carried out, 4,340 accreditations were refused, including 130 for people on the S list. And vigilance paid off: thanks to a massive police presence, comparable to that observed at the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia in 2014, the opening ceremony took place without a single security incident. According to fragmentary figures from the Paris police headquarters, common law crime is also down compared to that observed in the summer of 2023. Feedback from tourists seems positive. In short, the record of Gérald Darmanin and his services appears largely positive, with the exception of one notable hiccup: the sabotage operation organized on the night of July 25 to 26, which paralyzed the SNCF network for 48 hours. This is the only time, during this Olympic fortnight, that the security services have seemed overwhelmed. In particular, the saboteurs’ ability to carry out this operation on strategic locations, at the confluence of several branches of the SNCF network, raises questions. Were these locations sufficiently protected? Did the perpetrators benefit from accomplices within the railway company? The judicial investigation currently being conducted will have to answer these burning questions.
Cybersecurity: Hackers didn’t spoil the party
French cyber experts got their hands dirty well before the start of the Olympics. These events, scrutinized by the whole world, attract three types of malicious actors. “On the one hand, groups that carry an ideology and carry out low-intensity but highly visible attacks to get a message across,” explains Gérôme Billois, partner at Wavestone. On the other, scammers armed with ransomware. The latest threat: hostile states, led by Russia. “One of the most feared scenarios was an attempt to disrupt the opening ceremony, as during the 2018 Olympics in South Korea,” points out Gérôme Billois.
The one in Paris fortunately went off without a hitch. And the attacks attempted during the Games period did not hinder the smooth running of the events, not even the one directed against the Grand Palais. “Most of the facts that have been reported to us are low-intensity attacks, in particular DDoS attacks [NDLR : qui immobilise temporairement un site en créant un afflux de trafic factice] or attempted fraud via fake websites,” the National Agency for Information Systems Security (Anssi) confirmed to L’Express on August 8.
At the end of July, halfway through the Olympics, government services had already recorded 68 attacks. The final toll is not yet public, but clearly the French cyber strategy worked. Auditing and securing critical systems, raising staff awareness, simulation exercises, deploying detection tools… everything had been methodically prepared. A solid barrier that held up well.
Sports report: an ambitious but successful bet
From the outset, the mission imposed on Les Bleus for these 2024 Olympic Games was very clear: to reach the top 5 of the medal table. During the months leading up to the competition, Emmanuel Macron and his Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra repeated this very ambitious objective over and over again, made possible in particular by the famous “home advantage”, the renovation of the French sports model via the “Ambition Bleue” strategy, or the “Gagner en France” program, allowing French athletes to benefit from the best possible logistical conditions. The bar was set very high, for a French delegation that had only climbed to 8th place in the medal table in 2021 in Tokyo, with 33 medals won, including 10 gold.
But the French athletes rose to the challenge. In two weeks, they won 64 medals, including 16 gold, 26 silver and 22 bronze, thus reaching the last place in the coveted “top 5”, behind the unbeatable United States, at the top of the ranking, ahead of China, Japan and Australia. With this result, France smashed both its record for the total number of medals won – set in 2008 in Beijing, with 43 decorations – and that of the number of gold medals won – set in Atlanta in 1996, with 15 Olympic champion titles. The French delegation owes a lot to swimmer Léon Marchand, who alone won four individual gold medals and a bronze medal in the relay, as well as to the French judo team, which won six medals in a few days, including two gold. Some historic victories are also to be celebrated, such as the gold medal of Althéa Laurin in taekwondo, which thus won the first Olympic title in the history of this sport in France, or that of the French volleyball players who were crowned for the second consecutive time.
Transport: on time
During this Olympic fortnight, if there were a “Bison futé” giving live information on the status of all means of transport, all the lights would be green like never before in the history of the Ile-de-France. This was an asset of the French bid: the priority given to public transport, to transport spectators and athletes alike.
Contradicting the warning from the mayor of Paris at the end of 2023 (“We’re not going to be ready”), the bet was successful. According to figures from Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), the reference organization, 4 million people were transported each day, half a million travelers in addition to the 3.5 million residents of the Paris region. With a very high punctuality rate of 94.5% for the RER and Transilien and 96.5% for the metro. In order to prepare for any incident, “we had come up with 125 plan Bs,” said IDFM president Valérie Pécresse during a review on August 9. “This learning will allow us to be much more resilient in the future.” Everyone contributed: the SNCF says it mobilized 50,000 railway workers throughout France and 4,500 additional trains were added during the Olympic period. The same is true for RATP, thanks to 30,000 employees who sometimes postponed their holidays, and the extension of certain lines on schedule, starting with line 14, which considerably relieved line 13 to reach the Stade de France (and leave it). Or ADP, with the mobilization of nearly 1,500 people for reception at its airports or baggage management.
Finally, on the roads, we have never driven so well since the indicators – the number of kilometers of traffic jams, the average speed (51 kilometers/hour for the Coyote company on Sunday August 4) or the journey times (- 15% according to TomTom data) – have fallen drastically. There are two explanations for this: commuters left their cars in the garage and teleworking was the rule. As a sign of this astonishing fluidity, taxis and VTC drivers saw their turnover collapse.
Finances: controlled skid… to be confirmed
Between the starting blocks and the finish line, it is common to see gaps widen. The Paris 2024 budget will be no exception. In limited proportions, says Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra in an interview with L’Express: “The overrun will be limited to 15% for the budget of the organizing committee and 2% excluding inflation for that of Solideo, the structure that piloted the construction of the Olympic and Paralympic facilities.”
The Ifrap Foundation, in a study published a few days before the opening ceremony, was less optimistic. While the Parisian bid file of 2017 predicted a total bill of 6.2 billion euros, the bill could turn out to be almost twice as heavy. “Today, the official budget for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is based on 9 billion euros, including 2.3 billion in public funding,” explains the author. “But when we add indirect costs (cleaning up the Seine, securing the opening ceremony, bonuses for public officials and transport employees, etc.), the total cost of the Olympic Games already rises to 11 billion euros… Including 4.6 billion in public funding.”
This last figure is at the top of the range of three to five billion euros of public money put forward at the end of March by the president of the Court of Auditors, Pierre Moscovici, on France Inter. The magistrates will be keeping a close eye on things… A dedicated team is working on the subject to assess, by the end of the year, the cost of these Olympic Games for the French.
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