by Boats down the Seine, B-boys at the Place de la Concorde and the lure of cold hard cash promise that the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which will take place in 100 days in the French capital, will be Games like no other.
If traditionalists were discussing clever plans to upend more than a century of opening ceremony traditions, let alone welcome the sport of breaking into Olympic sport, they will be wide-eyed with fury. when it is announced that all field and field stars will be. USD50,000 bonus pocket.
After the relative sterility of the delayed and Covid-stricken Tokyo 2020, the French capital, as well as the individual sports on an ever-expanding and potentially thin schedule, are preparing to pull out all the stops. removal
The Games will begin on July 26 with the first opening ceremony to be held outside a stadium, instead each national delegation walked 6km down the city’s main artery before disembarking in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Two weeks later, windmills, freezers and top rocks will become an official part of the Olympic vocabulary for the first time as the break makes its debut, B-boys and B-girls going head-to-head in DJ-led battles.
If its inclusion is less controversial than the appearance of live pigeon shooting on the program for the first Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, it has raised some questions about the almost obsessive commitment of the IOC to attract the attention of the world’s youth.
Breaking joins other recently established sports such as skateboarding, surfing and BMX in the ‘urban’ part of an ever-changing Olympic program, and one for which a city like Paris seems well-suited.
For Team GB, now led by 15-year-old Sky Brown, who is looking to build on her historic skateboarding bronze in Tokyo, there is a similar sense of turmoil, as a new generation of stars arrives to head and start escaping. the established order.
Laura Kenny will not be there to light up the Velodrome, and in contrast to their dominant preparations ahead of Tokyo, the question marks hang over the ability of Adam Peaty and Max Whitlock to retain their respective titles.
However, Tom Dean, Keely Hodgkinson, Tom Daley, Beth Shriever and Emily Campbell will be hoping to return to the podium at the head of a squad that looks more than capable of regaining their top three status in the table final medal.
Dean and his closest resurgent Duncan Scott continued a remarkable surge to prominence for the British swimming team – kick-started by Peaty’s heroics in Rio – while Daley and Matty Lee highlighted a wave of promise for Team GB in the water.
Hodgkinson’s ongoing battle against rivals Athing Mu and Mary Moraa will generate top billing on the track, where double world champion Josh Kerr returns to his thrilling rivalry with Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Simone Biles is sure to dominate the international scene, as she hopes to add to her current haul of seven Olympic medals after recovering from a psychological phenomenon known as the ‘twisties’ which curtailed her success in Tokyo to the ground -single bronze – if heroic – on the island. beam.
Meanwhile France’s hopes come no more – literally – than judo heavyweight Teddy Riner, who has three Olympic golds and 11 world titles, and offers to cap his extraordinary career with another victory at home.
All of these will be played in front of huge sell-out stands, a world away from the bare bleachers in Tokyo, and a symbol, or so the IOC would like to see it, of the Games after weathering one of the games. the most serious storms in their history.
Perhaps it’s that newfound understanding of the need to adapt that has pushed the IOC to make more aggressive changes, whether that be in future bidding processes or getting the boys and girls off the streets. and into the Olympic auditorium for the first time.
The Olympic movement has evolved without thought since the first Games in Paris 124 years ago, when determined amateur activities such as angling, ballooning and croquet were also on the agenda, the latter said to have been held in front of paying viewers only.
Some might say the latest changes are a step too far. But after the turmoil of Tokyo, most of those lucky enough to be present in Paris will be grateful that the Olympics are back, and ready for any kind of blow .
