With Paris Olympia 2024 around the corner, France is in turmoil. Preparations for the Games have been fraught, with striking workers, terrorist threats and disgruntled residents. Now, the snap elections have delivered political paralysis and heightened social tensions. In this context, Esprit <\/em>explores the history and significance of this unique competition, as well as the controversies currently surrounding it.<\/p>\n Almost nothing remains of the original \u2018values\u2019 of the modern Games as imagined by their \u2018founding father\u2019 Pierre Coubertin. Re-founded in 1894 as an amateur event \u2018detached from politics\u2019, it was to be \u2018protected from the real world, yet capable of infusing it with a spirit of reconciliation\u2019, writes Marianne Ammar<\/p>\n Such idealism turned out to be notoriously difficult to uphold. As the Games continued almost uninterrupted through the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, the end of empires and decolonization, they \u2018converged with politics and diplomacy\u2019. In 2009, the United Nations granted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) observer status. The pretence that it\u2019s all just a game is definitively over.<\/p>\n In March 2024, Emmanuel Macron told Ukrainian journalists he would ask the Russian president for a ceasefire and \u2018to respect the truce during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics\u2019. Putin agreed to consider it. Yet the Olympic truce is \u2018an invented tradition\u2019, writes Sylvain Dufraisse, used to promote individual interests as much as global peace.<\/p>\n In the 1950s, several countries threatened to boycott the Melbourne Games. Spain and the Netherlands opposed Russia\u2019s participation, while Israel\u2019s participation was opposed by Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon. To justify letting all countries take part, the IOC invoked the Olympics of ancient Greece, where ekecheiria <\/em>was a kind of truce guaranteeing athletes safe passage to the Games.<\/p>\n Adjusting the concept, IOC officials called for \u2018good will to prevail between athletes, officials and spectators of different nations\u2019 for the duration of the Games, whatever their diplomatic relations. In 1972, the Soviets invoked the truce to demand that the US stations Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe suspend broadcasts in Munich during the Games.<\/p>\n After the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, at which the IOC called for a cessation of global hostilities for the duration of the Games, plus a week either side, the UN institutionalized the initiative. It now votes a non-binding text calling for the truce every two years, before the Summer and Winter Games. This step legitimized the IOC and its \u2018policy of apoliticism\u2019, granting it \u2018diplomatic recognition\u2019 and helping it \u2018maintain its monopoly on the organization of multisport international competition\u2019.<\/p>\n Just as global events seep into the arena, so do the Games reach out into the real world, transforming the sporting practices they touch, the host cities and their residents\u2019 ways of life. Host countries usually hope for international approbation, urban regeneration and a sportier citizen body. But France has set its sights much higher: Paris 2024 will showcase an alternative model to individualism and write a \u2018new national narrative\u2019, \u2018imbue the future with meaning for the young\u2019 and foster social cohesion.<\/p>\n How have sport and the nation\u2019s goals become so intertwined? Patrick Mignon traces the evolution of this relationship, from the Third to the Fifth Republic. Pierre Coubertin\u2019s vision of the Olympics was initially rejected as elitist, while in the interwar years, competitive sports, particularly football, cycling and rugby, were considered a threat to Republican ideals, capable of \u2018turning the people into a mob\u2019.<\/p>\n But gradually the French state perceived sport\u2019s utility for transmitting Republican values. In 1998, the World Cup briefly united a divided country, \u2018doing more than twenty years of immigrant integration policy\u2019. Will Paris 2024 have a similar effect?<\/p>\n Paris 2024 will showcase the city and endow it with new infrastructure and sports facilities. But at what cost? Hac\u00e8ne Belmessous points to a weakened democracy and the destruction of the utopian notion of a city for everyone.<\/p>\n In 1992, 2008 and 2012, Paris bid to host the Games, spotlighting the city\u2019s \u2018historical patrimony and symbolic figures\u2019. It promised Games \u2018on the human scale\u2019, concerned with ethical and ecological issues. The IOC was unconvinced. Having lost to London in 2012, Paris blamed its \u2018image as a capital frozen in time\u2019 and capitulated to the \u2018excessive demands of the IOC\u2019, offering itself up as an investment destination: \u2018attractive, creative, consumerist\u2019.<\/p>\n Since the 1990s, capitalism has increasingly determined urbanism in Paris; the Games are simply the \u2018denouement of a process unfolding at a distance from the democratic space\u2019. A 2018 law making the Games a \u2018project of national interest\u2019 reduced public consultation on development and removed permit requirements, stifling debate. While investors make a fortune, residents face \u2018unaffordable rents on the free market\u2019, \u2018a significant lack of social housing\u2019 and the privatization of public space.<\/p>\n Seine-Saint-Denis will be \u2018regenerated\u2019 but its problems with deprivation and discrimination are left unaddressed. And after the Games, the remodelling will continue, squeezing out the few remaining pockets of social diversity as neighbourhoods like Belleville, once an artists\u2019 haven, are redeveloped. \u2018\u201cFaster, Higher, Stronger\u201d is the slogan of the Games\u2019, notes Belmessous, but \u2018it\u2019s the watchword of global cities too\u2019.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Esprit-June-2024-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRepublican games<\/h2>\n
Capitalist games<\/h2>\n