After I did a review by sports of the 2020/21 Toyko Summer Olympic Games, I have been at the 2024 Paris event twice. Thus, I felt to do a top and flop posting, including a review of some of the sports held there. Hope you like my final post about the event.

 

Tops and Flops Paris 2024 – Sports

Sports and athletes should be in focus of Olympic Games, shouldn’t they? Thus I start with them in my post as well.

 

My Paris 2024 Top Sports

3×3 Basketball

Fast, thrilling, relatable – modern sports is based on these attributes. 3×3 basketball is exactly along these three characteristics. Both tournaments showed great matches in a great atmosphere – and definitely won the hearts of many sports fans. Mine included.

 

Canoe Slalom

While the traditional canoe and rowing disciplines would rather deserve to be on the fop side of this review, canoe slalom continues to deliver great pictures. The upward goals in canoe cross felt a bit like a lottery to me, but apart from that, this sport is simply fascinating. Look forward to more of it.

 

Badminton

I always liked to watch badminton. However, it is not shown that often in Germany. Seeing it live at Arena Porte de La Chapelle / Adidas Arena was amazing and – regarding the sports itself – the best Paris 2024 experience I had. A very fast, relatable sports. Even the matches with a rather clear score were very attractive. I loved it!

 

Surfing

The surfers had the burden to compete far, far away from Paris in Tahiti. And they did so in the middle of the European night. Nonetheless, the sports produced amazing stories and amazing pictures. Thus, the sport definitely took its chance in these weeks in August 2024.

 

My Paris 2024 Flop Sports

Soccer / Football

The male junior teams’ soccer tournament has always been somehow a second class Olympic event. And it takes so many stadiums and venues. I was initially surprised how poorly the attendance at many women’s matches was as well. However, women’s soccer has developed. World Cups and continental competitions became more and more popular and thus take away the special spirit a women soccer Olympic tournament had in the early 2000’s. It is the largest competitive sports in the world, but it is not special any more. Tennis, by the way, is facing similar issues to me. Kick soccer out of the schedule, please (I know it won’t happen, unfortunately)!

 

Rugby Sevens

Despite I am German, I really like rugby and also the faster rugby sevens. Nonetheless, I felt it was much better at Tokyo 2020/21. The sports is very attractive by its short playing time. The more, it is ridiculous how much time you can waste and how much it is actively done by the team in the lead. They need to change the rules. Rugby sevens will be rather popular in Los Angeles (also because it is somehow close to American Football), but they need to keep it alive in my point of view.

 

Shooting

In my point of view, there are far too many shooting disciplines. One reason for that is that they still separate men and women. I don’t see a rationale for that. In some disciplines, women even outperform their male competitors. I found this article, which even states that women might be physically better suited for some of the competitions. I feel having gender-mixed competitions would boost shooting a lot. If you look at tennis, there is generally a strategy of trying to out-power the female player. Shooting would not have that. Yeah, they would loose some half of their events, but they would add a lot of spirit.

 

Fencing

With the Grand Palais, fencing had maybe the most incredible venue of all sports. But the sports simply develops too much. It became too quick. The fights are too often disrupted by video reviews, especially in the sabre disciplines.Not too rarely, decisions felt rather random. It will be very hard for the sports, which comes with so much tradition, to become transparent for sports fans again.

 

Field Hockey

Yeah, I am floorball person and I’m generally not too much a fan of field hockey. However, even as a neutral sports fan, you see all the trouble this sports has. The most obvious was refereeing. Some referees I saw came with bad positioning and communication. The decisions on the artificial turf were too inconsistent, almost any challenge taken by the teams succeeded. Since the 1990’s, field hockey tries to keep the sports attractive by changing the rules. But Paris 2024 felt to me like a huge step back. Especially in the play-off games, goals scored out of play are rare. Penalty corners and penalty strokes are the absolute main way to win – and that changes the tactics.

Last, but not least, the shoot-out competition in case of a draw is ridiculous. This “8 second time to somehow score a goal thing, no matter how” thing is weird. You can pull back, take the rebound. As the goalkeeper must not block the ball in any way, it is even more amazing that especially the German teams struggled so much in the decider.

 

 

Tops and Flops Paris 2024 – Athletes & Teams

It is always a bit of harsh to point on several athletes. Nonetheless, I have to point out some of them – for positive or for negative reasons.

 

My Paris 2024 Top Athletes & Teams

Novak Djokovic (Serbia, Tennis)

The fact that Novak Djokovic won the Olympic tennis tournament is not a surprise. However, the way he celebrated his victory turned this day at Roland Garros into one of the key moments of the Game to me. The Djoker very often felt being heroic after Grand Slam wins. They also not too rarely felt like the victorious finish of a battle against his critics. In Paris, you saw how much his win against Alcaraz meant to him. He became mental, human. The way I saw him somehow changed. And I thus had to put him on the top of this list.

 

German 3×3 Basketball Team

USA, Canada, China, France, Spain – they all got beaten by four German girls in the small, street-style basketball court. To me, the golden medal for Germany was the key victory in regards of my home country. These ladies did amazing. And wrote basketball history – just in contrast to the male guys on the normal field.

 

Leon Marchand (France, Swimming)

Not only from the host country perspective, Leon Marchand was outstanding in the swimming competition. Fo golden medals and a bronze one – that’s more than many countries had in the medal table at the end of the event. Great effort by the swimmer.

 

My Paris 2024 Flop Athletes & Teams

Fiji Rugby Sevens

One gold medal, one bronze medal – that was the Tokyo 2020 games revenue of the Fiji Rugby Sevens team. In Paris, they struggled. “Just ” a silver medal on the men’s side, the ladies even just got last in their competition. I was rooting for them in this sports – and felt disappointed.

 

Vinesh Phogat (India, Wrestling)

100 grams too much at the official weighing before the Olympic finals took a safe medal for India in wrestling. Yeah, these things can happen and they did happen to other wrestlers in the past. But it was likely the bottom of the Indian Olympic campaign 2024 – which overall could have been much more successful.

 

Hungary Men’s Water Polo Team

Water polo is a great sports – and it is a key sports in Hungary. The domestic sports fans rooted for a golden medal – and were disappointed by their team. The sports disaster concluded with a shoot-out loss in the bronze medal games against the United States. They should have done much better.

 

Tops and Flops Paris 2024 – Organization

Enjoying the Games is also a lot about how things are organized. Thus, this part might not be that much relevant (but maybe even more interesting…) for those of you who followed Paris 2024 on TV screens, but much more

 

My Paris 2024 Organizational Tops

Public Transport

There were rumors about strikes during the Paris 2024 Olympics. However, public transport worked in Paris and was the backbone of traveling around the French capital. A down side was that they doubled the fare prices just for the time of the sports competition.

 

Relaxed Atmosphere

Despite all safety concerns, the atmosphere at the Olympic venues was overall very relaxed. In most cases, the baggage and personal search processing were rather easy as well. This was a big factor to a nice atmosphere.

 

The Venues

Beach volleyball at the Eiffel Tower, Equestrian at Versaille and many more – Paris presented their finest locations in these Olympic Games. Indeed, these memories will stay in your mind on the positive side.

 

My Paris 2024 Organizational Flops

French Only

Volunteers, security staff, announcements in the venue – French. Yeah, it is the local language and I don’t say announcements should be English only. But it is an international event, people coming from all over the world. I don’t want to ask somebody in English and get a French reply once I am close to the Olympic rings and a venue. Lille did so much better, but Paris too often felt like the worst experiences I did in the late 1990’s at Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) when you felt that people even refused to speak English (even though they obviously understood it).

 

The Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony is on my negative side of memories, definitely. You might wonder about that. And I absolutely cannot deny that the pictures we saw in TV was great. The athletes cruising along the scene, the Eiffel Tower laser show, the appearance of Rafael Nadal and Celine Dion, we will remember it. But the people who easily paid a four digit amount of Euros did not see all that. Do you really need to persiflage the Last Supper? Apart from the weather, the opening ceremony became a (rather perfect) TV show, not an event for the people in Paris. And, even worse, the athletes just had a side role in this script. I hated that. The welcoming of the nations, the presentation of the athletes, who party together at the end, is just a key element of this event to me. Paris 2024 set other priorities.

 

Swimming in the Seine

I think that this one must be on the negative side. It is good that France invested a huge bunch of money to clean the river, but finally, the decision to swim in the river for triathlon and marathon swimming simply became a nightmare. At least, they should have had an alternative – and go for that one early.

 

International Picture

There were surprisingly many issues about the direction and management of the events, regardless whether you were in the arenas or watched on TV. In our field hockey match, it took the organizers ten seconds easily to turn off the goal jingle after a shot which was far out of the shooting circle. Weird pictures on TV, no wind indicator displayed in archery – the list felt rather endless to me. Very surprising, as these kind of things are typically platinum standard in Olympic events.

 

Ticket Prices for Swimming & Athletics

During a swimming session, the commentator of the German TV said about the session in La Defense: if you still get a ticket, come here! This felt almost cynical to me. Especially the tickets for the likely two main sports of Olympic Games, athletics and swimming, were absolutely overpriced. The equivalent seat for the six hours rugby sevens session we visited at Stade de France would have been almost 1,000 Euro for an athletics evening ticket. And the service was poor. If people pay it, the organizers do somehow right. But I don’t like it.

In general, you feel the Olympic spirit anywhere, so if you think about going to Los Angeles 2028 or Brisbane 2032: go for the cheap sessions. There will be plenty of them. And they will be fun as well.

 

Tops and Flops Paris – Others

There are of course other topics, which just do not fit into the three categories above. They are summed up in here.

 

My Paris 2024 Tops (Other Topics)

Lille

I loved Lille when I went there in December 2023 for soccer. And it was even better for the Olympics. To me, Lille was the better Paris. Yeah, the scenery was not that posh, there is no beach volleyball in front of the Eiffel Tower, but it felt so much like Olympic Games should feel. And thus, it was somehow also back to the basics.

 

No Major Incidents

Nowadays, you have to state that part as positive. Apart from the attacks on the French infrastructure on opening day, the safety concept of the 2024 Olympic Games worked out well – one of the key factors so that visitors and athletes could enjoy the event.

 

My Paris 2024 Flops (Other Topics)

WADA & Doping

Doping has been a big topic during Paris 2024. Not too much due to the number of positive tests during the event itself (the number so far is rather low), but due to rumors and proofs that doping has not been systemically investigated in the past. I definitely won’t point at athletes and assume that they were exposed to the topic. There are also just very few athletes where I am absolutely sure that they did clean sports. But it is hard to deny that there is an arbitrage in whether you have the chance to use medical support in your sports, depending on the country (and also the discipline) you are competing for. Sports needs to regulate it.

 

The German Fan Zone

Whenever TV showed scenes from the Deutsches Haus in Paris, the pictures from Stade Jean Bouin felt amazing. However, our experience from the German fan zone in Paris were at most mixed – maybe also as we went there on the opening ceremony day. Nonetheless, this fan and party area not only for German fans was somehow the least positive experience of my Olympic experience.

Team D Fan Zone at the Paris Olympic Games 2024

 

The Schedule

I especially thought about this during my work for the medal table postings. Too few sports get done in the first week of the Olympics. Finally, the only prominent ones were swimming and Rugby Sevens. There are many reasons for that. One of them is that especially the traditional team sports events take too long. The schedule should be more leveled, sports like hockey and soccer (see above) need a smaller presence. If you get some more sports done earlier, you also give a bigger focus on these sports in the first week ad on other sports in the second one. The Olympics are a event of so many sports and disciplines. You should have the times when you are in focus.

Furthermore, the Olympics should either be a few days longer or, alternative, you deselect some events so that they fit into the three-weekend time frame. I would love all athletes to have a realistic chance of being part of the opening ceremony.

 

Title picture: Paris 2024 Logo, copyrighted by the IOC

 

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