There are 44,000 windows along the six-kilometer route, roughly three and a half miles, of the River Seine proposed for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Keep this in mind as you weigh Saturday’s events in Pennsylvania, where a gunman climbed to an open roof to take shots at Donald Trump.
It is 100% impossible to secure open space.
Four months ago, in the first week of December 2023, I wrote that the Paris 2024 opening ceremony needed a Plan B.
Since then, I have had dozens of conversations with people inside and outside the Olympic movement. No one has said the idea of a flotilla of boats, the athletes of the world floating down the River Seine for six kilometers, or three-plus miles, is good. Almost everyone has said the same thing about this idea: it’s flawed.
For the sake of all that is decent in our world, the hope here is that they pull it off. But it so obviously seems the farthest thing from safe.
From the front lines of campus unrest here in the United States, this dispatch from the University of Southern California, where the mood decidedly is, to be gentle, unsettled.
One of my best students in last year’s sophomore news writing cohort was personally called out, by name, at an on-campus protest—right in front of the j-school building that, you should know, is due to be the main press center at the 2028 LA Games. One of my current sophomore standouts, 19 years old, covering a rally, was so rattled by taunts she asked to be driven home in a police cruiser. She called me, her professor, from the back of the car, saying, am I going to be OK?
This, so we are all clear, is the key demographic — teens, college kids — the International Olympic Committee is seeking to draw to the Paris 2024 Games in eight short months. Prediction: uphill climb.
The Paris Olympics are due to open in July 2024. That’s 17, 18 months from now. Already, though, it seems to be all about Russia.
For the past 10 years, it seems like it has been about Russia: Sochi 2014 and the matter of the country’s laws. The seemingly endless doping controversies. Then, of course, the invasion of Ukraine just days after the close of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
The International Olympic Committee’s overarching mission is to try to “unite the entire world in peaceful competition.” The entire world means everyone, no exceptions, and this is why already, 17, 18 months away, there’s so much discussion, to and fro, about the notion of getting the Russians to Paris as neutrals.
Except, the focus on the Russians, 17, 18 months away entirely misses the point.
The International Olympic Committee on Monday approved breakdancing — or breaking, as the IOC would have you call it — for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, and for those who remember the spring and summer of 1983, when all the girls had leg warmers and knee warmers, yes, even in the midst of summer, and massive hair and huge shoulder pads and all of us were frosted and perfect, let’s all sing together now to Irene Cara and Flashdance. Don’t be shy. You know the words:
What a feeling
Bein's believin'
I can have it all
Now I'm dancing for my life
Take your passion
And make it happen
Pictures come alive
You can dance right through your life
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — As expected, the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday gave approval to four sports to join the Paris 2024 program: surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and, quelle horreur for traditionalists, breakdancing, or in IOC jargon, breaking.
“More youth, more urban, more women,” Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet said of the organizing committee’s goals for its program — the four sports a one-time add not guaranteed to be listed as part of the so-called “core” Olympic program.
Surf, skate and climbing will feature at Tokyo 2020, along with karate and baseball/softball. Breakdance made a breakthrough at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.
Yes, yes, yes, Chariots of Fire, the 1981 movie that won four Oscars in telling the story of track and field at the 1924 Paris Olympics, is all about the sprints, not cross-country.
OK, OK, OK, Chariots of Fire is about the Olympics but something bigger. It’s a story about British athletes at those 1924 Paris Olympics, one who is a devout Scottish Christian running for the glory of God, the other an English Jew and what it takes to overcome prejudice.
People, we need not quibble here with details.
When people think about Paris and the 1924 Olympics, what do they think of? The iconic beach running scenes from the movie, right? The sunlight! The sand! The sea foam! Especially since Mr. Bean — Rowan Atkinson — had great fun with the whole thing during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Games.
Those beach scenes are, more or less, kinda-sorta, cross-country running. Good enough, anyway. At least for this point:
The 2024 Games will be 100 years since the Games were last in Paris. As things happen, those 1924 Games were also the last time cross-county was on the Olympic program.
Paris 2024 organizers want cross-country back. So does track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF.
For many people, the announcement Thursday that Paris 2024 seems set to to include breakdancing as an Olympic sport was met with — say what?
No, for real.
Let’s get real.
If you are complaining that “breaking,” as it’s called in Olympic jargon, doesn’t belong on the Summer Games program but you swoon every Winter Games when the ice dancers do their luscious thing — come on.
Beyond that, and finally — the French finally did something right.
Let’s give credit where it’s due: the French got this totally right.
