Tokyo (AFP)
The Olympic rings are coming to Paris!
After the unprecedented Tokyo Olympics under a pandemic, the French capital will take up the torch on Sunday evening to organize this planetary sports festival in the summer of 2024 with three years of challenges ahead of it.
This time, it will be really difficult to compare with the previous edition: the Tokyo Games postponed for a year, maintained whatever the cost, behind closed doors, and despite the opposition of Japanese opinion.
Three days before the closing, the health bubble has held, Japan has crowned a lot of champions on its soil, and the event has indeed taken place.
Tokyo can pass the baton.
One hundred years after the 1924 Games and the exploits of Johnny Weissmuller in the Tourelles Porte des Lilas swimming pool, Paris will once again be welcoming.
For the boss of the organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, unwavering enthusiasm on the shoulder, the race has already started but "we will have to accelerate", he explains to AFP, after two intense weeks in Japan, between observation of backstage and discussions with the IOC or the skaters.
Among the "happy few" who came to attend the opening ceremony, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, assured that France was "hard at work" to prepare the event.
Sunday evening, it is the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who will receive the flag from the governor of Tokyo.
Tony Estanguet will be in Paris for the festivities.
Once this symbolic relay has passed, the organizing committee (Cojo), the delivery company for the Olympic works in charge of the construction sites (Solideo) and the State, which sets everything to music, will have to take up several challenges: budget, and not betray the promises of candidacy.
Time because the date of the events has already been set (July 26 to August 11, 2024) and the budget because public opinion can no longer support the budget slippages often caused by such projects, helping to undermine the popularity of the Olympics which is already a little dull.
Funded by private revenues (sponsors, CIO contribution and ticketing), the organizing committee has already found savings of 300 million in 2020, by redesigning the site map and removing temporary facilities.
Its budget is 3.9 billion euros.
The Cojo is under the close supervision of the Court of Auditors, which notably ordered it to increase the envelope dedicated to cybersecurity and recently asked it to work on various scenarios of "resizing the budget" to deal with any eventuality. , like a health crisis.
Because in the end the State will be the guarantor.
The boss of the organization of the Paris-2024 Games Tony Estanguet during a press point in Tokyo, August 5, 2021 Franck FIFE AFP / Archives
On the sponsor side, several contracts were secured before the summer, Sanofi and Decathlon, bringing revenue to some 600 million out of the 1.1 billion euros expected to complete the budget.
On the construction site side, the most important ones, the Olympic aquatic center in Saint-Denis and the athletes' village, have started.
Aerial view of the construction site of the Olympic village in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, April 8, 2021, Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP / Archives
At the end of June, in front of an audience of elected officials from the Ile-de-France region, Michel Cadot, interministerial delegate to the Olympic Games, conductor of all the players, was very clear: "We will not be able to accept delays, we have a tiny bit left over. margin, we will have to be extremely vigilant, "he said.
"We will not be able to deal with these questions through additional costs," he said, about the projects in progress because that is where public money is injected.
After a course strewn with pitfalls, work on the media village, also located in Seine-Saint-Denis, has finally started as well.
In addition to an extraordinary sports spectacle in "iconic" sites (the Place de la Concorde or the Palace of Versailles), the Olympic Games have also promised to leave "a legacy" in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France. : additional swimming pools, housing, road infrastructure.
Projects which sometimes come up against local disputes such as Aubervilliers where a swimming pool which is to be used as a drive comes to plan allotment gardens.
But Paris 2024 also has important ambassadors, like Teddy Riner: "We fought too hard to get this Paris-2024 candidacy. We have the Games and I intend to take advantage of them and live these Games fully and do everything possible to be present, "launched from Tokyo the five-time Olympic medalist, who will be 35 years old in 2024.
© 2021 AFP