The Paris Olympics are an impending catastrophe, but only until they have begun

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When Paris was bidding for the Olympics nearly 10 years ago, it had a grand vision for opening night. Instead of the traditional, stadium-bound opening ceremonies, Paris decided they would take place along the River Seine.

In this original iteration, two million spectators would be on hand to watch 10,000 Olympic participants float by on barges.

Once the actual planning began, that number had been reduced to 600,000.

Now it’s down to 300,000, most of whom will need tickets. The ratio of police to spectators will be 1:6.

Now there’s a new problem – balconies.

Thousands of apartments line the six-kilometre route along the Seine. Most are well over a century old.

It stands to reason that many of their occupants will invite a few friends over to watch the festivities. What happens when tens of thousands of Parisiens throw open their windows and lean in unison on rusty 19th-century railings?

That’s how you get a call to do a quickie inspection of all the balconies in Paris. Negotiations about how exactly to accomplish that are ongoing.

Four months out and Paris’s Olympic anxiety is starting to peak. There are travel concerns, residential concerns, business concerns and ironwork concerns.

It once seemed sensible to shut down the book-selling kiosks that line the banks of the Seine for the duration of the Games. Until the literary establishment heard about it. One French author called it a plot by “the enemies of poetry.”

After an intervention by the French president, the kiosks will remain open, obstructing what were already some of the busiest sidewalks on Earth.

Another sensible idea – tell people to work from home for the three weeks of the Games. Who would object to a patriotic call to do Zoom meetings from bed and work half days during the height of summer? Paris. It would and could object to that.

“It feels a bit like COVID lockdown again,” one irritated Parisian, Julie, told the Guardian.

She says that like it’s a bad thing.

This is playing host to an Olympics works. You are sold utopia. A few months out, you’re looking at Planet of the Apes. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, possibly including the collapse of human civilization.

This tendency to overpromise is universal. In its initial proposal, Paris said all public transportation would be free. This was part of its push to make this the most carbon-neutral Games ever (which is the 21st-century version of ‘best Games ever’ and just as big a lie).

Nothing that involves millions of people flying somewhere is carbon neutral. The only way to make the Olympics more carbon intensive would be to hold them at a coal mine. The only carbon-neutral Olympics is one that’s cancelled.

Anyway – the Metro. In Paris’s imagination, it would be free. In actuality, it is doubling prices. Possibly to offset carbon. More likely to buy huge nets to put under balconies.

The Metro itself has become symbolic of Olympic jitters. Originally, there were plans to massively expand its reach, including an express line to both airports. Few of those expansions have panned out.

Instead, faith in public transportation is cratering. Pictures of Metro platforms jammed like club gigs proliferate on social media. The usual refrain is something along the lines of, ‘If it’s this bad now, imagine how bad it will be during the Olympics.’

Nevertheless, there is a run on Metro tickets. People want to stock up before Paris starts fleecing tourists. Local government has set up a series of alerts to warn people which subway stops to avoid on certain days.

So here is the expectation – calamity.

And here is what will happen – nothing, probably.

It’s been a while since they held an Olympics in a metropolis that was also a tourist magnet – London 2012.

Sochi was too terrifying; Rio only a little less so; Pyeongchang too distant (also, terrifyingly close to North Korea); Tokyo and Beijing were pandemic no-go zones.

Understandably, everyone is a little out of practice.

London was primed for the same logistical horrors, with a little less balconies and a little more terrorism. The effect was to empty the city of its chickens.

The result was an ideal Games. The roads were passable. The subways worked (much better than they do during a typical London summer). The sidewalks, shops and restaurants were full, but not thronged.

Those who remained were determined to make an occasion of it. London during those Games was buzzing 20 hours a day. You could not step foot in a pub without making a half-dozen new friends. By the end, the city had fully embraced the occasion. It may have been the last truly great global event.

Paris is following the same template. Sell the best-case scenario, wait a bit, admit the worst-case scenario, understand that things will end up somewhere in the middle, and then let people decide for themselves. By July, there won’t be any citizen of Paris who can claim they don’t understand what they’re signing up for.

It is the way of these things that the first couple of days will be chaotic. They always are. By Day 4 or 5, everything will have settled into a new routine.

Some things will go badly wrong. That’s a guarantee. Try to bear in mind that no great story starts with something that went exactly as you planned it.

The worst disaster scenarios have yet to befall a Games (knock on wood). Eventually, they will. But there is no contingency for disaster. All any of us can do is show up and try our best.

Paris will be an impending catastrophe right up until it starts.

Then it’ll be like every other Games – a party that’s only as good as the people at it want it to be.