This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Ataraxidermist on 2025-01-14 15:08:28+00:00.
Do you feel the heat? I know, it’s the middle of winter, but I’m asking you to use your imagination. We won’t go much further if you already start arguing about everything I say, and there will be plenty to argue about. The voices in my head assure me as much.
So, again. Do you feel the heat? The muscles underneath your skin, steely and wired for movement, aching to contract and move the glorious machinery of your body to new heights? The will to sing with a chorus of a thousand fanatics, lost in adoration as a lone athlete beats insurmountable odds?
Then your imagination has taken you back to the summer of 2024 in Paris, city of love, misguided tourists and pollution, not necessarily in that order.
I am your guide, some would say your cursed henchman.
If the sight of popular sports elicit only a sigh of disgust, you may be a creature of the higher arts and spirits, or a meany. Your pick.
There, now that these people are gone, we are among us simple beings. Simple beings who like to see people struggle, complain, and most of all, we like drama.
You know the Olympic Games. In all likelihood, you watched them, enjoyed them, followed them and caught more drama than I did. As such, this won't be an exhaustive tour, as there's too much of it and many small things you already know about. I've chosen the few tidbits I had a front row seat for, as I was living in Paris at the time.
It’s like looking at a living pig while you wet your knife and ponder about which part you will keep to yourself. The rind? The tenderloin? Decisions, decisions. And frankly, I just like to reminisce about a period that was pretty fun all in all. For me, less so for others.
Another reason to limit the discourse is that a lot of the drama is simply too divisive in nature, and as much as I like to complain about the rules keeping us human beings down and stifling our creativity, I agree with this subreddit’s tacit rule of avoiding that can of worms. Fear not, there’s still plenty to talk about.
Now follow me will you, and let’s start from the beginning.
Let's get the party started
(How did these guys ever get a featuring with Big Ali? Some mysteries will forever remain unsolved. But we got Big Ali saying "Pain au chocolat", and that's priceless.)
Paris started bidding for the Olympics in – checks notes – 2005, when they lost to the cursed Albion and that black cherry on top of it: London. Paris would finally win a nomination as host-city in 2017. That’s twelve full years of failed attempts, losing to London, Rio and Japan.
Do you know how Paris won? By being the last ones standing. Paris got 2024, Lost Angeles got 2028, there were no other contestants because the costs of hosting Olympics were getting prohibitive.
The French weren’t exactly motivated either. Well, some were, but you know the French. As long as there are two French people alive, someone will disagree with the other out of principle.
But this wasn’t just for the sake of arguing.
Since 2005, we went through an economy crash, Covid, and a few other events. The French debt has gone up by quite a bit.
Talking about Paris, Victor Matheson, a College of the Holy Cross professor of economics who has researched the financial costs of the Olympics said :
Under 10 billion is still a number of billion France didn't have.
This wasn’t the only point of contention.
Transport is complicated at the best of time.
Olympic Games would require :
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Closing roads for the bike races and marathons.
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Roads reserved for Olympic transports and emergencies.
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Handling an influx of tourists like never before.
In 2022, the expected number of people to be transported per day during the Olympics was about 7 millions, and 3 million during the Paralympics. That's twice the usual number, and you've seen on the picture how the normal situation can be hard to handle.
New metro lines are to be build, three are already so late they will be finished in 2026. Bus lines will be made longer, more trains are planned. The good part is that all sports venues are on the usual transport lines. The bad part is that it’s unclear if there will be enough personnel to transport all the beer-drinking screamers. Ile-de-France Mobilité, the ones in charge, made a request for new drivers. And nobody answered.
To give you an idea how dire things are, webpages started cropping up to know which bus and metro lines to avoid.
And that's not counting cases of sabotage, a coordinated attack on several train tracks shortly before the event.
Needless to say, the closer we got to the Olympics, the more you heard voices pointing out how we weren’t ready at all. All the skeptics - the only resource France has to spare - were in an even worse (or better depending on point of view) mood. Some Schadenfreude in there too, like sitting at a well-traveled road known for accidents and ready to snap photos.
But let us remain positive, roll up our sleeves (I'm told this is sexy), start the big works, and hire undocumented immigrants (I'm told this is less sexy).
It's the worldwide problem of construction industry employers smelling an opportunity and hiring cheap people they can throw under the bus (which lacks a driver) whenever work inspection comes by. But, how to put it, it doesn't give your country the best image when the Olympic village is built in ways that could at best be described as "morally dubious" while politicians praise the coming event as exemplary.
A special unit was created when the case was blown open, but luckily, there were only seven work inspectors in this unit for the entire Olympic mess, dozens of construction sites and thousands of workers. Most illegal practices will never be spotted, accidents won't be a biggy because hey, they never were here officially. Phew, that was close.
Let's make a pause and play pairs.
I say Laurel, you say... Hardy!
I say apples, you say... Oranges!
I say hiring undocumented immigrants, you say... Corruption!
Mate, you're good at this.
We won the nomination because there were no other contestants left.
Somehow, we still needed corruption just to be sure to win. This wasn't the only problem, further contracts were awarded in shady ways. But let it not be said that I'm a dishonest donkey (I am, but that's besides the point), it was later said no serious corruption was found. Investigation still goes on, but the worst case scenario should be out the window. And then they started police raids again due to suspicion of serious corruption. Go figure.
Illegals, corruption, what else is there... Oh yes! the homeless!
That doesn't look pretty in the city of love, now does it? Sure, France was nice during the pandemic, when hotels signed deals with the state to give temporary lodgings to those without a roof, but now tourists are coming back in full and there's only so much negative net-worth we can accommodate before getting sad. The solution is simple and practical, like every solution should be. [Put the homeless on a bus](https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-pari...
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