A wonderful priest with a posh accent was wrapping up his service at St Winefride’s Church on Merton Road at Wimbledon.
“May you go in peace out into the world,” he said. “And may God bless even the Spanish.”
Everyone had a jolly old chortle and went out in peace to the coffee joint across the street. He was talking about the European Football Championship final, of course, to be played between Spain and England at Olympiastadion Berlin. Fortune favoured the Spanish on a couple of occasions on Sunday. Carlos Alcaraz won Wimbledon and then The Red Fury beat England 2-1. “I do love my football,” the wonderful priest with the posh accent had said before grabbing his cuppa. “And an Olympics.”
On Monday in Paris, host of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, I took a seat at Brasserie La Lorraine on Place de Ternes. Just sat there and watched the world go by. An American tourist was barking into his Google Maps, “Where is the Champs-Elysees?” A beautiful woman at the table next to me furrowed her brow while reading a Charles Billet novel. Blokes around here don’t mind a pair of skinny jeans and white tennis shoes. Nor a moped. Nor a moustache. The women don’t mind some red lipstick and oversized sunglasses.
The reader of the Charles Billet novel started chatting away. She was drinking champagne. Must have been five o’clock somewhere. “Champagne is life,” she said. I told her I was in town to write about the Olympics. She said the city of love and lights was her home for “many decades”. I’m guessing she was in her 50s. I asked if she was glad the Games were here. She shrugged and said: “Paris does not need Olympics to feel important.”
If the American tourist found the Champs-Elysees, he might have come across the torch relay, which went from the Louvre Museum through Paris’s posh districts to working-class neighbourhoods and the Iron Lady, the Eiffel Tower, this week. Hundreds of people were called upon to carry the flame that will light the Olympic cauldron after the opening ceremony on the River Seine on July 26. Pop singers, a garbage collector, football legend Thierry Henry and BMX world champion Matthias Dandois were among those involved. The Games’ chief organiser Tony Estanguet has bemoaned “Olympics-bashing” among Parisians, many of whom have fled for summer holidays elsewhere in Europe, but the crowds were large and upbeat. “I got super emotional,” Dandois said after carrying the torch in front of the Iron Lady. “I’m from Paris. I grew up playing so much sport and watching the Olympics. It was a dream to be a part of it.”
Does Paris need the Olympics to feel important? Or does the Olympics need Paris? Few cities can match it for atmosphere, self-assuredness, history, gravitas, creativity, flair, passion, joy, crankiness and imagination.
The opening ceremony will be nothing if not photogenic. Grandstands have been erected along the Seine. Ten thousand athletes will be paraded on boats to the Trocadero, where the formalities will be staged. It’s the first time an Olympic opening ceremony is to be held outside a stadium. Three hundred thousand spectators are expected. Should be great. Could be a disaster. C’est la vie.
Security and the threat of terrorism is making everyone edgy. French President Emmanuel Macron says the ceremony will be shifted to an enclosed arena if the security risks are deemed too great. About 20,000 French soldiers and 40,000 police officers will be roaming the streets when the Games begin.
Yet to be announced is who will do a Cathy Freeman and light the Olympic cauldron. It might be the 56-year-old Marie-Jose Perec, of all people, the three-time Olympic champion runner who infamously, well, did a runner before her showdown with Freeman at the Sydney Games. Australians have a dim memory of Perec. She’s remembered as a quitter. In France, she’s revered.
A poll by the sporting newspaper L’Equipe has listed Perec, footballers Zinedine Zidane, Kylian Mbappe and Henry, and the entire World Cup-winning les Bleus squad of 1998, and five-time Olympic champion biathlete Martin Fourcade, and three-time winter Olympic champion alpine skier Jean-Claude Killy, and actor Omar Sy, and survivors of the 2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, among its candidates to light the cauldron.
“Classically, we imagine the torchbearer could be a French Olympic star athlete like Marie-José Pérec, Martin Fourcade or Jean-Claude Killy, remarkable specimens among the French Olympians,” L’Equipe wrote. “Unless we move towards a French sports star like Zinédine Zidane or Kylian Mbappé? But Paris 2024, which intends to ‘break the codes’, could play the originality card and opt for a French star known internationally like Omar Sy … or for a symbol of Paris who could be a survivor of the terrorist attacks of 13 November, 2015. Even more disruptive, why not a symbol of France winning, like les Blues of 1998 all together?”
Perec had 27 per cent of the vote when I took a squiz. Zidane was at 26 per cent. Ten per cent was for, ‘A survivor of the attacks.’
Perec’s midnight disappearance from the Sydney Games robbed the event of its most hyped showdown. Freeman was Australia’s favourite daughter. Perec was the two-time 400m champion from Barcelona and Atlanta.
Since then? Perec has claimed she left Sydney because she didn’t want to ruin Freeman’s moment.
Freeman has always lamented Perec’s absence. “I was so disappointed that Marie-José Pérec wasn’t in the race,” she told a business lunch hosted by NBL club Melbourne United last month. “I didn’t run as fast as I could have. I disappointed myself. In her peak … we would’ve taken women’s 400m running to the next level. I remember being on the warm-up track and hearing that she wasn’t going to be in Sydney and up at the start line. I reckon it was probably a split second where my heart dropped, because competitors love competing. When she wasn’t there, it was a bit of a blow. But what am I going to do? I’m not going to go chase her.”
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