Paris 2024: Australian Olympians could miss out on being part of the closing ceremony
Australian athletes face missing out on being part of the Closing Ceremony at this year’s Paris Olympics. Find out why inside.
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Scores of Australian athletes are resigned to missing out on an offer to march at the Closing Ceremony at this year’s Paris Olympics because of soaring accommodation costs in the French capital.
Under new rules in place for Paris, competitors, including members of the Australian team, have to leave the Olympic village around two days after their competitions finish because of a shortage of beds.
Many were still hoping to stay in France and attend the Closing Ceremony after the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) promised they would be allowed back in the village for the final night.
But the catch is they have to pay their own accommodation in the days between - which is proving harder than expected because of escalating costs.
Despite threats from the French government to crack down on any price gouging, the costs of hotel rooms and apartments during the Games have more than tripled from an average of $270 a night to $1100, according to Paris Tourism officials.
And that’s just too much for most cash-strapped Aussies athletes, who are facing the added problem that they can’t book anything even if they wanted to, because most of the teams haven’t been selected yet.
“Unfortunately, that’s just not feasible for Olympic athletes,” Rowing Australia CEO Sarah Cook said.
“We’re one of the lucky sports because we get funding from Hancock Prospecting that enables our athletes to support their training but most Olympic athletes are living below the poverty line so it would be extremely difficult for them to fund an extension to their trip.”
One of Australia’s most successful Olympic sports, the rowers have drawn the short straw for Paris.
Like the swimmers, because they start on day one, they can’t attend the Opening Ceremony.
To make matters worse, their events are being held outside of the French capital, and they a week before the Closing Ceremony, leaving competitors in a dilemma about whether they return straight home or remain in France at their own expense until they can return to the village.
A number of top Olympians, including swimming stars Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown, have criticised the decision, calling it a ‘rip off’ after they were sent home early from the last Olympics in Tokyo and forced to quarantine.
But Australian Olympic Committee officials have said their hands are tied because French organisers slashed the total number of available beds from 17,000 to 14,500.
It’s understood not every country is giving their athletes the option to stay on, and the Australians are among a few with a choice - if they can afford it.
“They will have the opportunity to come back into the village, which is necessary to participate in the Closing Ceremony,” Coates said.
“They will still be subject to our team membership agreements in terms of behaviour and those sorts of things but I believe we can trust them.
“They’ve asked for this opportunity if they don’t want to come straight home, if they want to stay and participate in the Closing Ceremony then they know they need to behave. I think there’s going to be a big presence of police everywhere.”
For many Australian athletes though, including swimmers and rowers, the costs of remaining in France are still just too high, which is also causing headaches for team officials still trying to figure out a solution.
“It’s incredibly complex. That decision was made by the AOC. It wasn’t made by the sports so our job, I guess, is to now manage the logistics,” Cook said.
“We just need to understand the lay of the land but we’re getting more information from the AOC around what that looks like.
“We just don’t have our head around it yet because we don’t have all the info so it is putting us under a lot of pressure.”
ROWERS SEEK HOLY GRAIL IN PARIS
The holy grail for Australian rowing beckons in Paris.
For all of Australia’s past success in water, the biggest prize in rowing has always eluded our men and women in green and gold - winning the prestigious eights.
The men have come close before, winning silver medals at Mexico City in 1968 and Sydney in 2000 as well as four bronze medals, while the Australian women have yet to make it to the Olympic podium.
But Paris is suddenly looming as Australia’s golden opportunity after a change in thinking and a perfect alignment of talent.
Australia has traditionally spread the most talented across as many different boats as possible - singles, pairs and fours - to maximise the chances of multiple medals.
But for Paris, the focus is on stacking the eights and all the early signs suggest it’s a gamble worth taking.
“We’ve got 14 Olympic gold medals on offer in rowing so it makes sense in a small country to spread our talent in the smaller boats,” Rowing Australia CEO Sarah Cook said.
“We’ve had great history in the fours, we won the two gold medals in Tokyo, but we’ve had enough data over the last few years to tell us that we have an incredibly strong men’s and women’s squads.
“We know that we have the depth of talent there, and we got both those eights on the podium at the world Championships last year.”
In rowing circles, the eights is considered the blue-riband event, so revered that even officials get misty-eyed just talking about it.
It’s the sport that John Coates, the International Olympic Committee’s vice president, started out on.
His name now adorns the Interstate Champions Cup that is up for grabs at next week’s Australian rowing championships and he’s all in on the project to win gold in the eights.
“It’s the ultimate team sport,” he said. “Putting eight people in the boat with the coxswain, and they have to do it in absolute sync or else the boat’s not going to move, you can’t have any boat stoppers in an eight, or any other boat.
“To put an eight together, you’ve also got to deal with different personalities and that’s not always easy.”
Cook, who won a bronze medal in eights at the 2006 world championships, said it was a special event that the Australian team was right to target.
“When people think about rowing, they think about the eights,” she said.
“Whether it’s the schoolboy or schoolgirl head of the river, the Australian rowing championships or the Olympic Games, everything builds up to the eights as the crescendo.
“And having raced that boat internationally and at an Olympic level, it is just the most extraordinary boat to be in…the noise, the power, the fury, as soon as the green light goes, there is something so competitive about the eight.”
While the decision to focus on the eights sounds like a risk, Cook says it made sense because everything pointed to the biggest boat representing having the biggest chance of success.
“It isn’t totally just throwing caution to the wind and running for it because it’s romantic and we’d love to do it,” she said.
“There is data to say that we think that they’re our best chances, but we’ve never really pulled the trigger before and gone ‘let’s back it.‘
“This is a considered decision. We’ve tested the speed of the fours versus the pairs versus the eights, and the eights just keep coming up as our quickest boats so the mantra that the high performance director and I have had is follow the speed and the speed is telling us the eights is what we should be backing in.”
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