The River Seine was at last clean enough for the triathletes to swim in, stadiums were full, fan zones were packed, the gold medals were rolling in, TV viewing figures were rocketing and a kind of sporting party-fever gripped the city-centre streets.
The first week of the Paris Olympics sprinkled its stardust over the hitherto grim public mood of deep political division, and the Games even appeared to have pushed to the back of many people’s minds the fact France had no new government after its recent snap parliament elections.
“When given a chance, sport can be extraordinary,” said the sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who was part of a government that resigned weeks ago after the elections, but was staying put for the duration of the Games. “These Olympics are iconic – there’s a winning dynamic that is allowing French people to feel something they haven’t felt enough for years: pride. It’s a reminder that France is capable of great things. It has contributed to our happiness,” she told BFMTV.
The first week began with a dazzling, rain-soaked opening ceremony along the Seine — that more than 85% of French people agreed was a success according to a Harris Interactive poll — and ended on an extraordinary Friday night winning streak for France that helped the host country chalk up an unprecedented nine medals in one day. Not only were there golds for the national heroes, swimmer Léon Marchand and judo star Teddy Riner, but one BMX bike racing event saw France take all three medals on the podium: gold, silver and bronze.
After only one week, France was second in the medals table and had already won more medals than in the whole of the Tokyo Games. That position may begin to slip as the athletics events get started – an area the host country is not predicted to match the might of the US. But France is hoping to stay in the top five.
It wasn’t just the winners grabbing the country’s attention, it was the sheer grit of taking part. The French athlete, Aurélien Quinion, who was in the 20km race walk on Thursday, got a call from his wife the night before the event as she went into labour with their first child. “She was on the phone in tears,” he said. “I said the most important thing was bringing our little girl into the world in the best conditions.”
So he took a taxi out of Paris to the hospital in a town north of the city. “We spent the night together, the baby was born around 2am, it was really intense, but I saw the little one being born and that was what was important,” he said. He stayed up all night with the baby then took a taxi straight from the hospital to the Trocadero in central Paris, got out and joined the race – taking place in scorching heat – coming ninth and beating his personal best.
Other athletes shone a light on what it means to be French after the recent elections saw weeks of rows over national identity and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party pledged to bar dual-nationals from certain state jobs. To thunderous cheering from French fans, Anastasiia Kirpichnikova won a silver medal for France in the 1500m freestyle behind the star US swimmer Katie Ledecky. Now a reservist in the French police, Russian-born Kirpichniknova, who has been training in the south of France for years, applied for French nationality after the start of the war in Ukraine. At the table tennis, French supporters cheered Jianan Yuan, the 39-year-old French No 1 who will play in the women’s team even on Monday. Born in China, she arrived in France aged 18 to train and gained French nationality in 2011.
More than 1m people had visited the 200 fan zones across France to watch matches on giant screens in the first few days of the Games. At least 120,000 people had visited the free Olympics activities at the La Villette complex in Paris where “Club France” was welcoming athletes for victory parades with their medals.
A record-breaking 9m tickets had been sold by mid-July, but after the opening ceremony there was a surge in purchases, including for the Paralympic Games which begin at the end of August. Many French people said they also couldn’t stop watching the events on TV or on their phones, even if they were supposed to be at work or working from home. An Opinionway poll before the games started found a third of French workers intended to watch the Games on office time in secret.
Meanwhile, in a high-rise social housing block that overlooked the hockey pitch in Colombes outside Paris, residents on higher floors had a clear view of events and could watch for free from their balconies, even if hockey remains a little-followed sport in France. “All the fervour of the stadium is great, even if I can’t understand anything about the game,” one resident told Le Parisien.
In the same paper, writer Pierre Chausse, said that Paris, a city that only months ago was being “mocked for its rats and bedbugs” had now regained its pride.
Transport was, so far, running smoothly. Tourist numbers were high, with the biggest contingent coming from the US. Huge crowds gathered every day to contemplate the Olympic cauldron – a ring of electric fire hanging from a giant balloon in the Tuileries gardens in central Paris. “It’s an absolute joy to see my city like this,” said the Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.
The president, Emmanuel Macron, who arrived in Paris from his holiday home on Friday night to watch the winning events and personally hug gold medallists, knows that in another week, when the Games end, the difficult politics will resume with MPs clamouring for a new prime minister and government.
