In poker, we call it going all-in. Bet it all on one shot. Emmanuel Macron placed Olympic Games at the heart of his five-year term. “The climax of his mandate”, “an event which will place the country at the center of the world for two months”, “the most beautiful Games in history”, “an event worthy of the Universal Exhibition of 1889”, boast his advisors. The risk is calculated, no doubt, but the outcome can only be radical. Consecration or disaster, no half-measures possible. The lights are orange today. Public transport works poorly, private security companies are struggling to recruit, small grains of salt constantly hamper the dynamic, like this wooden tower of scandal in Tahiti. Nothing unusual. Will France succeed in its challenge of making its Olympic Games an unforgettable moment? Story of an event, bigger than a simple sporting competition.
EPISODE 1 – How Paris won the 2024 Olympics: bluff, shenanigans and small arrangements
EPISODE 2 – Paris 2024, the three plagues of the Olympics: metro, swimming pool and… these millions who intrigue the justice system
Chapter 7: The “madness” of the opening ceremony
“You are all crazy !”. In front of Anne Hidalgo and Cojop, Didier Lallement repeated this sentence for months. The police chief, in office from 2019 to 2022, does not want an opening ceremony for the Olympic Games on the Seine. Unreasonable, he pointed out several times in notes sent to the Minister of the Interior.
An Olympic opening ceremony in town has never happened. Nowhere. Too dangerous, too pharaonic. Before the IOC, in 1986, for the candidacy for the 2008 Games, Jacques Chirac had imagined a parade on the Champs-Elysées. A dream. It was in Buenos Aires, during the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, that Thomas Bach clicked. The organizers put on a show along the “Avenida 9 de Julio”, the widest artery in the Argentine capital. Impressed by the feat, the IOC President said to himself that a ceremony in an open environment looks good. He thinks of Paris.
In the capital, precisely, Thierry Reboul phosphorus on the show, scheduled for July 26, 2024. Tony Estanguet hired this events specialist as “director of ceremonies” for Paris 2024, with a roadmap: “generating long-term memories”. An idea is starting to circulate: organize a parade on the Champs-Elysées, according to Jacques Chirac’s wish. Reboul has another plan. On June 23 and 24, 2017, it organized, as a service provider, the “Olympic days”, celebrations in the capital, including an athletics track on the Seine and a court near the Alexandre III bridge, where Emmanuel Macron tries armchair tennis. One day, while walking on the banks, he had a flash: “It can only be there”. He prepared his coup for months with his teams, then announced his discovery to Tony Estanguet, Etienne Thobois and Michaël Aloïsio, on July 18, 2019. In the introduction to his presentation, he slipped in a drawing of Pepe, the sulking child ofAsterix in Hispania. “If you don’t want what I’m going to offer, I’ll do like Pepe: I’ll stop breathing!”, warns Thierry Reboul. Everyone is excited, under the cover of some additional information.
In mid-2020, Tony Estanguet spoke about it to Emmanuel Macron. The athletes would parade between the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Pont d’Iena. “I thought the idea was crazy and I said banco,” the president told the newspaper The Team. Anne Hidalgo also supports. It remains to transform the vision into a serious project. The director Thomas Jolly is appointed head of the artistic component, in September 2022. Its content is top secret, only a handful of members of the Cojo, the IOC, the mayor of Paris and the President of the Republic are placed in the confidence. We just know that the ceremony will last 3.5 hours, that the athletes will parade on barges, in 162 boats for 206 countries and that 1,500 to 2,000 artists will be hired for the occasion. Technical devices will be placed along the banks, so as to be able to project fireworks or lights or films. If it rains heavily, a tiny part of the activities will be canceled.
The prefect of police and the prefect of the Ile-de-France region are also kept informed: the security aspect is the most discussed. In times of attacks, organizing an event with Israeli, Ukrainian, Russian, Iranian or American delegations is not easy. Above all, up to a million people are expected on the quays. In total, that’s 13 kilometers to secure. From the outset, prefect Didier Lallement was dismayed. “It’s not all serious,” he repeats over and over again. His replacement by Laurent Nunez, in July 2022, simplifies things. At the cost of draconian adjustments. The gauge must be reduced to a maximum of 400,000 people. You will need to register online in advance to access the platforms. The name of each person invited among the 20,000 residents of the show must be communicated to the prefecture. The dignitaries will be dropped off at Place de l’Etoile and will return to the banks by bus.
Plan B, Plan C
Before the IOC Executive Commission, meeting at the Pullman Hotel in Paris on December 1, Laurent Nunez and interministerial delegate Michel Cadot reassured officials about the risks of drone attacks for which public authorities are prepared. But IOC members also want to know if a plan B is planned, in the event of a wave of attacks before the ceremony, for example. Officially nothing is planned before Emmanuel Macron specified, on December 20 on France 5, that “there are obviously plans B, plans C”. “There is a real question, that of maintaining spectators on the high platforms. We can change until the end of April,” announces Laurent Nunez to L’Express. In this configuration, half of the access points would be closed to the public. Another hypothesis, never considered by the prefect at this stage, but which is starting to turn around, would consist of a cancellation of the athletes’ walk. Only the show would be maintained on the Seine.
To date, no state has officially requested not to participate, neither Israel nor Ukraine. To reassure them, certain points must be further clarified. Airbnb’s cooperation, for example: the State cannot currently force the company to provide the names of its tenants. “There will need to be legal adjustments on this point,” warns prefect Laurent Nunez. The arrival of S files near the platforms is another concern. The 45,000 law enforcement agents present on site will not be enough to check the identities of all the spectators. “We will not allow any S file to enter within the perimeter of the ceremony,” promises the prefect. Each of these individuals should be followed by the intelligence services before July 26. The last uncertainty concerns the second-hand booksellers and their famous boxes, 400 of which, located along the route of the ceremony, will have to be removed on the big day. Many refuse, which could have the consequence… of preventing up to 50 000 people to access the show, the prefecture has already calculated.
Chapter 8: Private Security Desperately Seeking Arms
The army, the last resort in the event of a shortage of security agents during the Games.
/ © Tetsu Joko / Yomiuri / The Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP
This boss of a large security company does not hide behind his little finger. The Games and the organizers’ calls for tenders? He preferred not to answer: “I won’t know how to do it. Where do you want me to find additional agents?” Private security remains one of the great unknowns of the event. Because the sector is seriously lacking in workers. In its budget, Cojop included a line of 207 million euros for securing competitions, filtering spectators or pat-downs. Outside of the sites, it is the State which takes control. Pierre Brajeux, the deputy president of the French Federation of Private Security, has done his sums: there is currently a shortage of 20,000 agents, and Paris 2024 is looking for between 20,000 and 25,000. We would therefore need to find a total of nearly 45,000. !
In an emergency, the State released 46 million euros to finance new certification training, and the 120,000 Pôle emploi agencies in Ile-de-France called some 117,000 people to try to poach them. At the beginning of December, 8,900 people had already been recruited by companies in the sector, and 13,000 were in training. Problem is, almost a quarter of new agents leave the business to work elsewhere.
Who then to compensate? At the police headquarters, Laurent Nunez keeps repeating that he has no room for maneuver. And if the army appears to be the last resort, officially no plan B is being studied. In the meantime, Paris 2024 is in the process of relaunching unsuccessful calls for tenders, particularly for the opening ceremony, by reducing the size of each contract to reach smaller companies. With the risk that certain selected companies will ultimately be forced to subcontract to others who are less careful about agent profiles. During the Rugby World Cup, a security company was caught red-handed: some security agents did not have a professional card, or even a residence permit.
Chapter 9: Tahiti, the tower of discord
© / afp.com/GAIZKA IROZ
It’s the story of a rickety tower in the standardized world of the IOC. December 2019: Cojop received several applications to host the surfing event which will take place from July 27 to 30, 2024. There is La Torche, in Finistère, Hossegor, in Landes, Lacanau, in Gironde. And Teahupo’o, in French Polynesia, where a round of the world championship already takes place every year. Studies are being done. In mainland France, the chances of obtaining the ideal size of the wave during this period vary between 11% and 15%. In Tahiti, it’s 75%! The overseas territory will host the Olympics.
When a delegation from Cojop went there, it discovered that the referees judged the events from a wooden tower, without toilets or air conditioning. An old-fashioned installation not at all up to Olympic Games standards. In August 2022, Tony Estanguet went there for six days and signed an agreement with Edouard Fritch, the president of the community. Except that the vagaries of politics get involved. In May 2023, independentist Moethai Brotherson became president and the tone of the discussions changed. The aluminum tower, which has already been built and which is to replace the old wooden installation, displeases. In mid-October, a peaceful march brought together several hundred people; organizers warn against possible destruction of corals in the lagoon. On November 23, Moethai Brotherson, passing through Paris, ratified an agreement with the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra: the aluminum tower will be installed, but in a minimalist version. It will not be connected to drinking water or wastewater. The referees will relieve themselves in nature.
The story twisted again when, at the beginning of December, a barge intended to carry out the work damaged the coral while trying to access the Teahupo’o site. All in all, the ecologists are on edge and the International Surfing Federation is even proposing to abandon the tower: the events would be judged from the shore, thanks to television images. Impossible, opposes Cojop because this hypothesis poses a problem of fairness between athletes. While new technical tests proved reassuring, Moethai Brotherson confirmed on December 10 that Teahupo’o would welcome the wave of the Games. A soap opera that almost made us forget Anne Hidalgo’s strange Polynesian journey.
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