The seven-year odyssey of the Paris Olympics should reach shore after a spectacular but hopefully serene opening cruise down the Seine on Friday at the end of a voyage that has survived rocky political moments. Following the horse-trading to win the Games, came the French infighting over how to host them. Paris was not sure it wanted to risk another rebuff after losing its 2005 bid for the 2012 Games to a London bid that the French believed inferior.
After the 2015 terrorist attacks on the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, elected Paris mayor in 2014, decided the city needed to act to rebound from the trauma. Just after his election as president in 2017, Emmanuel Macron promoted France's case to the International Olympic Committee. Since 2005, France had built a national velodrome and a canoe-kayak venue near Paris.
"By missing the Games, we built all the facilities," said a former elected official. After Los Angeles agreed to go for the 2028 Games, France was awarded the 2024 Games in September 2017. France would host a "sober" Games, using existing facilities and temporary arenas in postcard Paris: the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, Place de la Concorde.
After testing the water with a cautious toe, it added politically charged swimming in the Seine. Hidalgo, a Socialist, dredged up an old and unfulfilled promise by Gaullist Jacques Chirac, when he was mayor, that Parisians would be able to swim in their river. On July 17, just 10 days before the Games, Hidalgo took a dip in front.