Why Paris will shake off les Olympiques bleus

So far, so Sydney.

You will recall back then at the dawn of the millennium: if Historical Pre-Games-Grumbling had been an Olympic sport, then Sydney itself would have been pushing for the world record.

Not only that, your humble correspondent might have been regarded as the Michael Jordan of the discipline, complete with dark glasses, cigar and effortless elan as I fired off shot after shot with nothing but net derision! I remember complaining about most things: from the insanity of the original bid, to the cost, to the format, to the very idea – and on this one I actually was right – that the Queen of England should preside.

And then the Games themselves began.

All up, they were right and we were wrong.

All the complaints, quibbles and catastrophisation fell away, and the bloody thing worked! Fabulous from start to finish, it was fun, moving, spectacular, a memory in all our lives to warm the cockles of our soul ... and that was just the Opening Ceremony!

Sydney’s reservations about the 2000 Olympics fell away when Cathy Freeman lit the flame at the opening ceremony.Credit: AP

For it only got better from there. As a nation and a city, it was us in our Sunday best, at our best, for the full fortnight, strutting our stuff. The sun never stopped shining, the people never stopped smiling and the athletes never stopped performing, providing spectacular slices of sporting history – she’s got a lot of work to do! – that meant everyone who saw them felt privileged ever afterwards. Visitors from around the world were knocked out by the beauty of our fair metropolis, our welcome, the Games we put on.

London in 2012 followed a very similar pattern.

Right, now?

Paris is right at the end of the first part. Their pre-Games grumbling is at least on a par with ours and London’s and they may have pushed us down to bronze at best.

I compose these words in the back of a cab taking me from the Elysee Palace to Austerlitz Station, and there is good news, and bad news. The good news, purely from my own point of view, is that most of the streets we can get on are relatively free of people and traffic. Why, just a few days before the curtain lifts?

The streets – and the cafes – of Paris are unseasonably quiet ahead of the Olympics.Credit: Nathan Laine

Because so many Parisians have left town, and not just because of their usual summer vacations. They have left because they’ve already had une gutful of the Olympics before they’ve begun: the construction disruption, the heavy security, the hideous hassles of turning a glittering metropolis into a sporting stage just for two weeks, before tearing it all down again. Huge tribunes line both sides of the Seine, a complete temporary stadium has been built under the Eiffel Tower and everywhere I look previously open space has been set aside for some sport or other.

The bad news is that, despite the lack of local residents emptying les boulevards – and the restaurants and hotels for that matter, where custom at the places I frequent is down by as much as a half for this time of year – lots of streets are blocked by heavily armed police who have put up barricades, shutting down whole thoroughfares. It makes the trip a nightmare of trying to go where the police simply won’t let us go, for reasons they don’t deign to explain. My taxi driver, Moustapha, is incandescent with rage, at les flics, the police, Les Olympiques, the whole putain de thing, which is giving him the raging merdes, and has done for months now.

And he is not alone.

The criticism of the government has been so bitter that at last call a poll reported on their principal TV station TF1 this week had it that more than 50 per cent of Parisian residents wish they had never won the bid in the first place. There have been the usual cost blow-outs, fury over ticket-prices, the threats of strike action timed to do maximum damage just as the Olympics start – thank you, I know – and in France’s case, added complexities over pollution in the Seine, the removal of homeless people, and how local laws against Islamic dress affect athletes and visitors from other nations.

Sporting stages don’t come more fabulous than the streets of Paris.Credit: Getty Images

Right now, two days from the curtain going up, the mood is one of fatigue, of what they call ras le bol – fed up to the back teeth.

Against that?

Well, against that, this is Paris. This is a city that, just like us, even on a bad day is reminiscent of the old line about Wallaby tours being, “a lot like sex – when it is good it is FANTASTIC, and when it is bad, yeah, well, it’s still pretty good!”

Despite all the hassles, all the grumbling, all the angst, Paris has a built environment that is as close as it comes to our natural environment – best in class, as good as it gets. No one can actually be here and feel bad for long! From the Arc de Triomphe, to the Eiffel Tower, to the Champs-Elysees, the Bois de Boulogne, Place de Concorde and all the rest, sporting stages just don’t come more fabulous than this.

Back at the 1996 Olympic Games, Andrew Denton rightly said that “Atlanta is where old freeways go to die”. I know it and you know it, Paris is up the other end of the beauty spectrum from that – the absolute stunner end. And the French Olympic organisers, have decided to integrate the sport with that fabulous canvas as much as possible.

We of Sydney proved that, in the modern age, there was something about the Olympics that still had absolute magic that made it all more than worth it, despite all the hideous hassles to get there. London did the same.

I don’t know if Paris can pull it off. But their starting point: a city with such a history, such magnificence, such a tradition of putting on global fare that sheer takes the breath away means that if they can’t do it, it can no longer be done.

I think they can, and once it starts the vibe could and should be magnificent, as the world takes pause from the horrors of Ukraine, from the agony of Gaza, from the frump rump of Trump, to celebrate our common humanity through sport on a canvas done by Monet and mates.

One way or another, stand by, sports fans, for you know the drill.

Let les Games begin.

@Peter_Fitz

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