Let’s pretend it’s all over. Or not.
There are ten thousand athletes from all over the world who will soon start telling, until the day they die, about that time they were Olympians and competed in the Games. The smaller their town and the larger their family, the more times they will tell it. It was in Paris. The rings on the Eiffel Tower. The Olympic flame suspended in the air. Look at the photo, it was a long time ago, in 2024. The wrinkles on their face, the sparkle in their eyes, Dad, tell me again. How endearing.
There are two thousand or so athletes who have taken home an Olympic medal from Paris. One can imagine the moment of deciding where to keep or frame the medal, a synecdoche of a life. At first they will look at it very little: they must continue training, competing, dreaming of new medals: that is how the spinning wheel weaves the dress of ambition; whoever stops and revels in conformist delight never wins again, how inhuman. Later, they will look at it more and more often. They will seek an immediate reconnection with that dream of their first life, so forgotten, of when they were young and touched the sky and the sky was a very fine membrane that when touched broke and there was no more and then there was no more. How melancholic.
There are a handful of athletes who will be remembered as the great legends of Paris. The heroic and humane return of Simone Biles, with three golds, a silver, an unexpected fall and an elegant bow to the Brazilian Rebeca Andrade when the daughter of a cleaner with eight children from a Rio favela defeated the daughter of drug-addicted parents from the United States who was raised in foster homes and by her grandparents, and those two girls took refuge in gymnastics to jump, concentrate and not think. Other athletes will be remembered. The feat of Léon Marchand with his four golds and a bronze caught in the pool at La Défense. The adrenaline of Armand Duplantis pole vaulting the world record and the charisma on the most important night of all. flashedParis. Novak Djokovic’s heroin-addicted tears of triumph, finally winning his Golden Slam. Olympic glory and lasting glory for them. As it was for Michael Phelps and his twenty-eight Olympic medals, although there was also depression, and alcoholism, and the obligation of having to continue being the super athlete for which he had been prepared and to which he was chained like a nightmare so dark that it even took away his will to continue living. How difficult is that which seems easiest: triumph.
There are some Olympians for whom Paris will be a bad memory. Carolina Marín and her triple physical, emotional and vital tear. Rafa Nadal and his goodbye without a happy ending through the same locker room tunnel that so many times before made him bigger. The Japanese judoka Uta Abe with her forty screams of terror when she saw the fearsome face of defeat. What a light concoction epic is when tragedy does not lurk.
There is also a city that invented chauvinism and patented permanent grumbling and that emerges from these Games happier, more united, more loved. That is why it will be the envy of the cities that have tried to host the Olympic Games the most times and have failed. Buenos Aires, Budapest and Detroit, seven times. Istanbul, Philadelphia and Lausanne, six times. Madrid and Minneapolis, four times. New York, Toronto, Havana and Brussels, three times. Milan, twice. Florence or Cairo, once. And then, very soon, the putrid smell of money from Qatar, the Emirates or Saudi Arabia will be siren songs whose temptation the Olympic Ulysses will try hard not to listen to until the sound reaches the right ear. How repugnant that will be.
There are, after all, many disciplines that will be submerged in the ocean of invisibility today. No one will hear canoeing, rowing, Ginés, Craviotto, Llopis, Cerezo, K4, 500 again. No one will wait for them until four years from now, when Los Angeles raises the curtain of this unreal and fantastic show. Only they, and their successors, will remain awake until then. Those who go to bed every night with the dream of becoming a legend. Those who cherish the illusion of winning an Olympic medal. Those who at least fantasize about being able to live that summer, I’ll tell you about it again, when grandma was young and competed in the Games.
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