These are the the athletes deserve. Fans, too. After back-to-back Games without spectators, families or friends and with COVID protocols so restrictive they exacted a toll on athletes’ mental health, this summer’s offer a reset.
It would be dazzling enough to compete in the City of Light, with the never far from view. That those famous venues will echo with the roar of fans again will make these Games truly spectacular, as will athletes being able to share their triumphs or nurse their disappointments with their loved ones on site rather than over a computer screen. “It's the moment after.
Once I had the medal and I looked up and I realized no one was there, that was weird. So I'm really excited to share that moment,” said Gabby Thomas, who won silver with the U.S.
women’s 4x100 relay and a bronze in the 200 in Tokyo. When initially awarded, these Games were meant to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the most recent Olympics in Paris and the last under the guidance of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics. After a COVID pandemic that shrunk our worlds, however, the Paris Olympics and Paralympics have become a testament to resilience.
Of sport and of human spirit. The normalcy that seemed so far out of reach at the Tokyo Games, which had to be delayed by a year, and again in Beijing, which took place in an environment that was sterile in every sense of the word, has returned, and Paris will be a celebration of that as much as the amazing performa.