Only 500 days left and France will host the 2024 Olympic Games. Transport, budget, ticketing, the opportunity to take stock of the progress of preparations.
On paper, in 2017, when the 2024 Summer Olympics were awarded, everything was fine. The reality is another story. 500 days from the starting signal, it’s a race against the clock for the organizers, with many questions that make you dizzy.
Transport, a huge challenge
Starting with the transportation puzzle! ” We will do everything to be there “, promises the former French Prime Minister Jean Castex, current CEO of the RATP. When presenting the draft Paris 2024, everything had to run like clockwork. In reality, the Parisian public transport operator has been under severe strain for months and is facing great difficulties. The RATP is the victim of a staff shortage and is having difficulty recruiting new employees.
The biggest current challenge, finding drivers for the thousand buses supposed to transport the 250,000 athletes, organizers, VIPs and journalists. And the social climate does not play in favor of optimism, the Olympics are organized six months before the opening to competition of the bus network, currently operated as a monopoly by the RATP. The unions of the Régie are very hostile to it. A strike in the middle of the Games would cause chaos and the Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, says he is ready to extend the RATP’s monopoly.
By the summer of 2024, we will also have to find solutions following the delay in delivery of the future Grand Paris metro. The Paris 2024 candidacy file published seven years ago is breathtaking. For example, he promised journey times of “ 22 minutes to Media Village and 30 minutes to olympic village Since [l’aéroport de] Roissy by line 17 of the future Grand Paris metro. But this will not be completed before 2030… The CDG Express, a fast train to connect Roissy to the center of Paris, and line 16 will not be there either. The only metro that will be open on time: line 14, which is to be extended north to Saint-Denis Pleyel near the Olympic village and south to Orly airport in June 2024. The promises in terms of mobility are far from being met.
« The announced solutions seem neither sufficient nor operationally feasible “, judge Iona Lefebvre, of the Montaigne Institute, a think tank on public policies in France. For her, replacing unfinished metros with buses or shuttles on the Seine « will not adequately meet the needs ».
Don’t miss the opening ceremony
Paris 2024 wants to offer the world a grandiose and unprecedented opening show with a parade on the Seine. For the first time in the history of Olympism, an opening ceremony will be offered outside a stadium. On July 26, 2024 at 8:24 p.m. sharp, more than a hundred boats loaded with delegations of athletes will descend the river that crosses the capital. Six kilometers under the eyes of some 600,000 spectators.
But less than a year and a half from D-Day, the very format of the nautical parade, imagined by the Head of State and the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, has still not been definitively decided, the question more important concerning the gauge of spectators. In November, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin had mentioned 100,000 paying spectators on the lower quays and 500,000 free on the upper quays of the Seine.
For the opening ceremony alone, the mobilization of 35,000 police and gendarmes is expected. The Minister of the Interior is counting on an average of 30,000 members of the security forces on average per day during the duration of the Games, from July 26 to August 11. It also figures at 25,000 the need for private security agents to secure the competition sites, responsibility of the Organizing Committee for the Olympics (Cojo). At the end of February, only 3,000 of these agents had been hired and 1,800 were in training, according to the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region.
Avoid budget drift
How much will the Paris 2024 Olympics cost? Who will pay? Each Olympic edition experiences a financial skid, often several additional billions are needed to close the envelope.
For example, aggravated by the Covid health crisis and their postponement for a year, the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 cost 12 billion euros, according to the Court of Auditors of Japan. Downright twice as much as in the application file.
In Paris, the addition displayed is currently 8.8 billion euros, when in 2017 it was 6.6 billion. On the one hand, there is the budget of the organizing committee which is based on ticketing revenue, that of sponsors and a contribution from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). 96% of private origin, it rose to 4.4 billion euros at the end of 2022, an increase of 10%, half due to inflation. It has swelled by 600 million euros since 2018. On the other hand, Solideo (Olympic works delivery company), which is building the Olympic village in particular, has a budget of around 4.4 billion euros. euros including 1.710 billion of public money (State and communities).
In reality, this sum of 8.8 billion does not include a whole series of costs. In a report from the Court of Auditors published in Januarywe can read that this presentation, which mixes public expenditure and private expenditure of various kinds, is based on conventional perimeters which have evolved and are in any case not representative of all the expenditure actually incurred “. Clearly, one, we can’t do the addition and, two, we mix cabbage and carrots. For example, this amount of 8.8 billion euros does not include security-related costs. In addition to security expenses, there will be expenses related to transport and health. Thus, the State has also recently added several million for the new anti-doping laboratory and which, according to him, is justified by the fact that France will have a high-standard anti-doping laboratory after the Olympics. The actual bill will be known only after the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris.
Turn off the grumbling over ticket prices
The first phase of ticketing turned to the “ bad buzz “. Ticket prices higher than expected, cheap tickets sold out quickly, obligation to compose packs with ” small sports “. If the organizers have repeated that the prices are not more expensive than in London, the discontent has struggled to die down. Many dissatisfied people thus mocked the Paris Olympics displayed as ” popular » et « accessible ».
The subject even landed in the Senate during the session of questions to the government. The Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, questioned on the question of these prices deemed excessive, reiterated that she was attentive to ” accessibility ” tickets.
Nearly 3.25 million tickets were sold for the Paris Olympics following a first sales phase launched more than a month ago, a ” hit according to Tony Estanguet, president of the Cojo, who defended the pricing policy.
This first phase put on sale in packs of three tickets minimum (30 maximum) almost a third of the 10.5 million tickets. Of these 3.25 million tickets, nearly 13% were sold at 24 euros, 70% at less than 100 euros and 4.5% at more than 200 euros, detailed the organizers.
The second phase of ticket sales, this time individually, will begin from March 15, with a new draw. This time, 1.5 million tickets will go on sale. The prices for the finals of certain sports will vary between 50 euros and 160 euros for the breaking finals for example, or between 95 and 980 euros for the basketball finals. “ We have issues that are difficult to reconcile, both to generate income […] and on the other to make sure it’s a popular party “, acknowledges Tony Estanguet. The expected ticketing revenue should bring in nearly 1.4 billion euros.
Three questions to Hugues Fabrice Zango
With 500 days to go before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, we asked Burkinabe triple jumper Hugues Fabrice Zango, vice-world champion, what this Olympic deadline represented.
RFI: Does this symbolic marker of 500 days before the opening of the 2024 Games mean anything to you?
Huges Fabrice Zango : “The 500 day marker yes it is a very important marker for all athletes, as will be the 365 days, the 100 days before the Olympic Games. It reminds us that this goal is fast approaching, that it is not very far away and that we can precisely count down the time we have left to arrive at these Paris Olympics. For us athletes, these are markers that reboost us in our training, which gives us strength to pursue our dreams until the Olympic Games. »
Do you think about these Paris Olympics every day?
“The Olympics are tomorrow, it will be the apotheosis of my career. If I think about it every day, it’s obvious, I want to fulfill myself at these Games. I put a lot of things aside to be able to prepare them well. Every day, I eat, I breathe and I experience the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. I can already feel the atmosphere starting to get heavy, but I also feel a mad excitement. I know that at these Games, I will simply perform the version of me. »
The triple jump final, in just over 500 days, how do you imagine it?
“For the triple jump final which will be in 500 days and more or less two weeks, I think it will just be a magnificent moment. We will have a beautiful sun, I will be ready, there will be my parents in the stands. I imagine that my opponents will be very fit, they will all be able to jump 18 meters and me too! I feel a crazy excitement to surpass myself and I am Olympic! This is how I imagine this final. »
Interview by Frédéric Suteau
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