behind the scenes of the Olympic Games (episode 5/10)

The 131st session of the IOC takes place in Lima, Peru, from September 13 to 16, 2017. The chips are down, the award of the 2024 Olympic Games to the Parisian candidacy is officially confirmed.

In Lima, the official birth of Paris 2024

Tony Estanguet: In Lima, it was great. We were in the match until Lausanne, and there, we arrived more relaxed. Even if we didn’t give up, it was very festive.

Teddy Riner: When we won, it was something extraordinary. In Peru, there was a great party, a good atmosphere, we were super proud to win these Games, to bring it home. Lima, I think it’s engraved forever.

Tony Estanguet: The party on the return flight, when Teddy took the microphone and made the whole delegation laugh, it was strong. Teddy was important, Olympic champion, French sports star, leader. We feel a great pride in him which, for us, was central after the trauma of Singapore, when we were all at the bottom of the bucket. Seeing the most iconic and charismatic French athletes be so happy and so mobilizing was a real satisfaction.

Étienne Thobois: Ryadh Sallem, a wheelchair athlete, had the right words: “It’s like your first child, you know in advance that the birth is going to take place, but it’s still the happiest day of your life.”It was at the same time a relief, an enormous joy and a form of responsibility. It was the former executive director of the Olympic Games, Gilbert Felli, who said: “Your dream comes true, your nightmare begins.” [“Votre rêve se réalise, votre cauchemar débute.”]

In September 2017, all indicators are in good shape. According to a survey carried out by the IFOP, 83% of French people believe that the Paris 2024 Olympic Games are “good news” for the country. The COJOP is born, with Tony Estanguet at its head. The Parisian ambition to offer innovative and ecological Olympics is confronted with reality.

New Games?

Tony Estanguet: A second chapter opens, that of organization. Immediately, reality takes over. There is a world of difference between putting an idea in a file and making that idea come true. We move from “that would be nice” to specific objectives.

Étienne Thobois: Six months after the Games were awarded, we understand that lines 16 and 17 of the Grand Paris Express metro will not be delivered on time. So we ended up changing competition sites [des épreuves de natation ont été déplacées de Saint-Denis à Nanterre, en partie à cause de cela] and we redesigned access to the Le Bourget media village. We also discovered that we would not be able to install the shooting center in La Courneuve following more in-depth environmental studies at Georges-Valbon Park, forcing us to migrate to Châteauroux in 2022. The judges’ tower for the Surfing event in Tahiti sparked big media hype [des associations ont dénoncé son impact sur l’environnement]but there are always technical subjects with Paris 2024. It is a 4 billion euro project.

According to official figures, Paris 2024 has a budget of 4.397 billion euros (excluding works), 96% financed by private income: ticket sales (32%), domestic partnerships (28%), contribution from the IOC for TV rights (17%) and the TOP global marketing program (11%). The rest is covered by merchandising. The 4% of public funding is directed towards Paralympic Gameswhose economic model is “not yet mature”, according to COJOP.

Étienne Thobois: We manage details all the time. During the Olympic Games, we will operate at 35 competition venues. So every day, for years, we have been resolving issues that are complex by their nature, by the thresholds. The Olympic village, for example, is a hotel with 12,500 beds, you can imagine the logistics… Managing 42,000 hotel rooms in Paris, operating 1,300 buses, 4,000 light vehicles, that’s not Nothing. We must prepare to become ex nihilo the second transport operator in France, for the movement of accredited people, an operation equivalent to public transport in Lyon for three weeks. In terms of food, we will serve approximately 13 million meals and snacks. This is what the city of Paris for school canteens for one year.

Tony Estanguet: These are economic, political, social and sporting balances full of complexity, especially in the complicated periods that we have gone through and are still going through, such as the “yellow vests”, the pandemic, wars and inflation. But we held on, almost within the budget planned at the start. And with the same ambition. [Selon la fondation Ifrap, le budget de Paris 2024 était chiffré à 3,9 milliards d’euros en 2021, avant de passer à 4,4 milliards en 2022, soit 10 % d’augmentation.]

Étienne Thobois: The harshness of the 2010s in Paris, and in particular the attacks suffered by the capital, was taken into account in our reflection. By force of circumstances. Making the Games a real platform is the meaning of our slogan, “Let’s open the Games wide”. Proud of our values ​​as a country and Olympic movement, we believe that sport is a vehicle for pushing one’s limits, but that it also has something to say in terms of inclusion and universality, with people of different social origins and religions. We carry big messages about gender equality and the environment. We don’t bend our backs.

THE Olympic Games, rightly pointed out for their gigantism, provoke numerous reflections and criticisms on their ecological impact. For the first time with Paris 2024, one of the senior executives of the Organizing Committee is managing environmental excellence. Formerly of the civil service and of ENGIE, the Franco-Italo-Argentinian Georgina Grenon has been carrying out this mission within COJOP since August 2018. The objective? Drastically reduce CO2 emissions compared to previous Olympics.

Georgina Grenon, director of environmental excellence Paris 2024: The ecological ambition of the Paris Olympics is very important. 95% of competition sites are either temporary or already existing. There is little construction compared to previous Games. We also want to implement a halving of our carbon footprint compared to the average for the London and Rio Games. From the moment of application, the specifications were tough, but that is what is fascinating: the possibility of making such an event more responsible and taking advantage of it to give a boost to the ecological transition. For example, the 17 million drinks and 13 million meals have been redesigned. A meal at the Paris 2024 Olympics will have half the carbon impact of an average French meal. To do this, we double the proportion of plants, we reduce the use of single-use plastic by 50%, we source locally, we create seasonal menus.

One of the particularities of Paris 2024 is to register sporting events in the city, from Place de la Concorde to Trocadéro, via Les Invalides or the Eiffel Tower. Which caused some surprises for Georgina Grenon…

Georgina Grenon: To achieve our goal of the first Olympic Games powered by 100% renewable energy, I thought it would be easy to source. But transporting this renewable electricity requires cables. And there wasn’t enough of it. We learned that at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, for example, there was not the power necessary for our beach volleyball stadium. Events like the fireworks or the July 14 show are held using generators, which I didn’t know. The Stade de France works in the same way. Everything had to be changed! A match day at the Stade de France consumes around 10,000 liters of diesel. For the 2012 London Olympics, four million liters of diesel were burned to provide electricity. For us, it was unthinkable. We therefore worked with Enedis [gestionnaire du réseau électrique public] so that all additional connections are made. It was necessary to pull cables and convince the broadcaster [opérateur en charge de fournir des images de l’événement au monde entier] that our system would be more reliable. This measure is a legacy of Paris 2024. The request from the government and the Ministry of Sports is that from 2024 all stadiums operate without generators. If Paris 2024 does without it, everyone can do without it. This will provide many opportunities for sport and events to reduce their emissions.