Boats down the Seine, B-boys on the Place de la Concorde and the lure of chilly, onerous money promise to make the Paris 2024 Olympics, which get underway in 100 days’ time within the French capital, a Video games like none earlier than.
If traditionalists have been already blanching at audacious plans to tear up over a century of opening ceremony traditions, not to mention welcoming the game of breaking into the Olympic fray, they are going to have been white-eyed with fury on the announcement that observe and discipline stars will every pocket a USD50,000 bonus.
After the relative sterility of a delayed and Covid-stricken Tokyo 2020, the French capital, in addition to the person sports activities on an ever-growing and doubtlessly tenuous programme, is making ready to drag out all of the stops.
The Video games will begin on July 26 with the primary opening ceremony to be staged outdoors a stadium, every nationwide delegation as an alternative despatched bobbling 6km down town’s main artery earlier than disembarking in entrance of the Eiffel Tower.
Two weeks later, windmills, freezers and prime rocks will grow to be an official a part of the Olympic lexicon for the primary time as breaking makes its debut, B-boys and B-girls going head-to-head in DJ-driven battles.
If its inclusion just isn’t fairly as contentious as the looks of stay pigeon capturing on the programme for the primary Paris Olympics in 1900, it has raised some questions in regards to the IOC’s nearly obsessional dedication in the direction of attracting the eye of world youth.
Breaking joins different not too long ago established sports activities like skateboarding, browsing and BMXing within the so-called ‘city’ part of a continuously evolving Olympic programme, and one for which it might seem a metropolis like Paris is ideally suited.
For Group GB, now led by the likes of 15-year-old Sky Brown, eager to construct on her history-making skateboarding bronze in Tokyo, there’s a sense of comparable upheaval, as a era of latest stars emerge and start to eclipse the established order.
There shall be no Laura Kenny to gentle up the Velodrome, whereas in distinction to their dominant pre-Tokyo preparations, question-marks hold over the flexibility of the likes of Adam Peaty and Max Whitlock to retain their respective titles.
However, Tom Dean, Keely Hodgkinson, Tom Daley, Beth Shriever and Emily Campbell will count on to return to the rostrum on the head of a squad that appears greater than able to resuming its prime three standing within the closing medals desk.
Dean and his closest revival Duncan Scott continued a surprising surge to prominence by the British swimming crew – kick-started by Peaty’s heroics in Rio – whereas Daley and Matty Lee underscored a wave of promise for Group GB within the water.
Hodgkinson’s ongoing battle to keep away from one other silver lining in opposition to rivals Athing Mu and Mary Moraa will generate prime billing on the observe, the place double world champion Josh Kerr resumes his mouthwatering rivalry with Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
The worldwide narrative will inevitably be headed by Simone Biles, hoping so as to add to her present haul of seven Olympic medals after recovering from a psychological phenomenon referred to as the ‘twisties’ which restricted her success in Tokyo to a solitary – if heroic – bronze on the beam.
In the meantime French hopes don’t come any greater – actually – than judo heavyweight Teddy Riner, who boasts three Olympic golds and 11 world titles, and bids to cap his extraordinary profession with one other victory on house soil.
All of which shall be performed out in entrance of the welcome sight of sold-out grandstands, a world away from the naked bleachers in Tokyo, and an emblem, or so the IOC wish to see it, of the Video games having weathered probably the most critical storms in its historical past.
It’s maybe that new-found consciousness of the necessity to adapt that has pushed the IOC into making extra aggressive adjustments, be it in future bidding processes or in urging the b-boys and b-girls off the streets and into the Olympic auditorium for the primary time.
The Olympic motion has advanced unthinkably since that first Paris Video games 124 years in the past, when resolutely novice pursuits like angling, ballooning and croquet have been additionally on the programme, the latter reportedly staged in entrance of a single paying spectator.
Some may say the most recent adjustments are a step too far. However after the turmoil of Tokyo, most of these lucky sufficient to be current in Paris will simply be grateful that the Olympics are again, and braced to bop to any form of beat in any respect.
