SPOTLIGHT | PARIS GAMES The four Kenyan athletes had just arrived at the 52-acre, 82-building Paris Olympic Village intersected by the River Seine. One was pushing a wheeled cooler with a giant wireless speaker on top, blasting African pop music. All four were swaying, grooving, gyrating their way down the street.
Around them residential towers rose with fl ags of different countries hanging from windows and balconies. Uzbekistan on the ground fl oor, South Korea above them, Montenegro and the tiny African nation of Lesotho above them. Azerbaijan next to Bosnia and Herzegovina next to China.
Athletes from Sierra Leone and Costa Rica walked past in team gear. Spaniards aimlessly rode past on bikes. The Serbian women's volleyball team appeared around the corner.
At the village plaza next to the river, the Argentine men's field hockey team lounged in chairs. Down the block, the Austrian delegation was checking in. Georgian judokas were in the game room.
Now through Aug. 11, the Olympic Games will be contested across 329 medal events in 32 sports. Most of the venues are in metropolitan Paris.
Soccer is in stadiums across the country. Basketball is in Lille north toward the Belgian border. Sailing is in Marseille south on the Cote d'Azur.
Surfing is in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. But the essence of the Olympics is here, inside the secure perimeter of the swaying, grooving, gyrating village, a utopian bubble out of the media's gaze, largely shielded from the commerciali.