The end of Olympic escapism for gloomy France

The end of the widely hailed Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris this weekend will be greeted with pride and relief, as well as trepidation in a country in the throes of a deep political crisis.

After months of gloom and self-doubt in the run-up to the start of the Olympics on July 26, Paris and the country at large threw themselves into the spirit of the Games, embracing new national sporting heroes along the way.

The closing ceremony for the Paralympics on Sunday, when the Olympic flame will be extinguished for a final time, will mark the end of six weeks of thrilling sport and almost flawless organisation that produced a sense of escapism from the country’s divisions and woes.

“The idea is to finish with a huge party that will prevent the tears of those who might be saying to themselves ‘damn it, it’s all finished’,” chief organiser Tony Estanguet said ahead of a ceremony that will see the national stadium turn into a giant nightclub.

“We’re going to have a party and then on Monday maybe we’ll be disappointed because it really will be all over,” he added.

More than 20 top French DJs from “French touch” legend Cassius to Martin Solveig are set to close out the Games, with a line-up overseen by 76-year-old French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre.

“I think that we will all feel a sense of joy, pride, the impression that something is ending that has enabled us feel good together and to show to the world how we can enjoy ourselves,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters on Friday.

“I will fight against the idea that we have to move on from this enchanted period to resume our lives and our sad passions,” she added.

– Political instability –

She was referring to the morose national mood before the Olympics, made worse by snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron that produced a hung parliament in June.

After more than 50 days without a permanent government, including the entire Olympics period, Macron named a new prime minister on Thursday, 73-year-old former minister and top EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.

Analysts say the country is set for a period of severe instability, with Barnier’s grip on power seen as fragile and dependent on tacit support from the far-right National Rally party, which is the largest single party in the new National Assembly.

“One of the positive aspects of the Games was that the political class respected the idea of an Olympic truce,” Paul Dietschy, a history and sports professor at the Universite of Franche-Comte in France, told AFP.

“There wasn’t chaos, or demonstrations or strikes, and France’s image has ended up being boosted,” he said.

Other non-events during the Olympics and Paralymics were also cause for celebration.

French security forces helped keep the more than 10 million visitors safe, preventing a much-feared terror attack.

The creaking Paris metro system performed efficiently, defying predictions of travel problems, while the city’s bus drivers, garbage collectors and municipal workers kept the city moving, clean and well-organised.

“The state is powerful in France and things worked well,” Dietschy added. “The success of the event has contradicted France’s pessimism and cynicism and the idea that everything is going badly and is badly organised.”

– ‘Powerful emotions’ –

Although mayor Hidalgo hopes the city and France more broadly can bask in the afterglow of a national triumph, most observers see signs the country is already moving on from its sports-inspired break from reality.

Hidalgo’s controversial suggestion to retain the Olympic logo on the Eiffel Tower until the next edition in Los Angeles in 2028 has already divided Parisians and local lawmakers.

“It will remain an interlude, moments of powerful emotions that were experienced at the time,” Jean-Daniel Levy, a public opinion expert from polling company Harris Interactive told AFP of the Olympic and Paralympic period.

As with all previous Olympiads, organisers are hoping for legacy achievements which have often proved hard to measure or fleeting in the past.

It remains to be seen whether a short-term spike in interest in sports results in a durable increase in physical activity.

The majority of the public investment linked to the Games has been targeted at regenerating the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris, which is the mainland’s poorest and most crime-ridden area.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Dietschy told AFP.

A public audit into the cost of the Games, as well as several criminal investigations into organising committee members, including one targeting the salary of Games supremo Estanguet, could also tarnish the image of the event as a national success story. (BSS/AFP)