The world is talking, and its eyes are twinkling, about Simone Biles, Sifan Hassan, Rebeca Andrade, Léon Marchand, Sydney McLaughlin, Imane Khelif, Mondo Duplantis, Mijaín López, Stephen Curry, Remco Evenepoel, Zhanle Pan, Teddy Riner and the wonderful Letsile Tebogo, the best of the Games, along with the Sena. Or it cries for Carolina Marín and her broken knees, so much talent, or for Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Noah Lyles, fallen, so much ambition. They are the light of the Games, the flame. The country they represent, their flag, are accessories that give colour without more, secondary. They are the privileged talents, custodians of the advances in the learning of human movement, of physiology, of technology, of mental health. The champions of the great, beautiful battles. Leaders of the awareness of youth, of their global power.
They all sparked the imagination of those who watched them. Biles and Andrade have taken gymnastics out of its elitist origins, which want men to be disciplined and formal like soldiers and women to be stylized like Bolshoi dancers, and have taken it, with their energy, their power, their color, to the neighborhoods, the streets, the favelas. Marchand, and her four gold medals, two of them on the same night, made France finally feel, for once, proud of its athletes, and made everyone think that Michael Phelps could one day be equaled. Mondo, and his air of the Little Prince, a likeable Timothée Chalamet before the dust of worms, once again defeated the law of gravity, and with him the entire stadium rose on a Monday night. McLaughlin is the sophistication of Hollywood and a unique talent, her beautiful stride in which the fences seem to disappear when she approaches. Riner, the French judo giant, is persistence, as is, even more so, Cuban Greco-Roman wrestler Mijaín López, 130 kilos, 41 years old, who won his fifth consecutive gold medal in his sixth Games. Curry leads the Dream Team that wins back the fans, and Remco brings the flavour of the Tour to the crowded sidewalks of Montmartre. Sifan Hassan and Imane Khelif are the power of the African woman, the audacity of the Dutch woman in taking on a mythical challenge – running and winning the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon: two bronzes and one gold – which gives prestige to long-distance running in times when everything is done at full speed, and the fists of the Algerian boxer, and her character and determination, which knock out hate speech, classism, racism, transphobia. And Tebogo, from Botswana, who represents, like Julien Alfred from Saint Lucia or Thea Lafond from Dominica, the unique globality of athletics, the sport that remains the ultimate symbol of Olympism and in which athletes from countries we didn’t even know existed can always win.
In Paris, the best Games ever, shone like never before. After Rio and its corruption and economic problems, and Tokyo in the midst of the pandemic, the Olympic movement needed Games like those in Paris.
In the shadows, underground, other wars.
Athletes are vassals of a flag that they treat like kings, or like empresses, oh, her majesty of the Sifan Hassan fund, the latest award winner, when plump managers hang around their necks a medal from the Chaumet goldsmiths’ workshops offered on Louis Vuitton platters by slender pubescent canephoras, as Rubén Darío would say, dressed in 1920s clothes, white polo shirts, loose beige trousers and a Parisian titi cap, all woven in the LVMH workshops. Athletes generate billions in revenue that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a supranational private power, manages without having to answer to anyone and swells the medal table, the classification that on Olympic nights, once the competitions are over, serves as a distraction and a game for lovers of the Olympics, sometimes a Eurovision panel, and that they, in their carpeted boxes, the managers who argue and fight, turn into the stage for a political battle. As if the honour of a nation depended on the ability of a field hockey player to convert a penalty corner into a goal, or on the accuracy of a basketball player’s free throws. The medal tally, more than the sporting health of a country, reflects the quality, skill and intelligence of its investment in producing medal winners. And the capacity of its leaders.
United States versus China. In global politics, in the world economy, in the anti-doping war. In the medal table of the Games, which China dominated (40 golds to 39) until the last minute of the last competition, until the two free throws converted by Khahleah Copper that gave the USA the gold medal in women’s basketball (67-66 against France): 40 to 40 and final victory for the empire by total number of medals: 126 (40 gold, 44 silver, 42 bronze) against 91 (40-27-14). Spain (18 medals in the end) occupies 15th place in a table alongside the usual winning powers. top tenwhich is occupied by the usual powers and the host country (Japan, Australia, France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy), the Netherlands has unexpectedly infiltrated the scene thanks to its female athletes (Femke Bol and Hassan) and the three gold medals won by the giant of the velodromes, Harrie Lavreysen. Its 17.7 million inhabitants win one of the 34 medals every 520,000 people. An unrivalled metric. A model that is difficult to imitate.
For the sixth time in the last seven Games, since Atlanta 96, when the Soviet Union became multiple countries, Russia and a few others, the United States has won the Games. The only time it lost? Beijing 2008. China won, of course. And Russia is no longer even here, punished by Vladimir Putin’s misdeeds in Ukraine. With the Soviet threat gone, China is the great enemy.
Thomas Bach, 70, who wanted to change the rules in order to run for a fourth term at the IOC, is persuaded not to do so and announces that elections will take place in 2025. Sebastian Coe, the president of the athletics federation, immediately announces that he is seriously considering his candidacy to succeed him. How well he handles the conflict between the two superpowers will largely decide his fate.
The cold war became an open battle a few months ago, when Hajo Seppelt, the anti-doping investigator for the German broadcaster ARD, revealed that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had covered up the doping of 23 Chinese swimmers, many of them Olympians. Immediately, in a coordinated action, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), always presided over by Travis Tygart, the sheriff who put all his efforts into finishing off Lance Armstrong, hammered the iron, demanding responsibility. WADA organized commissions of inquiry, revealed all the procedures and stood by its initial decision: the positives for trimetazidine were due to contamination in the kitchens of a training center. Any other interpretation was a misrepresentation with bad intentions. USADA kept up the media war, accusing the president of WADA, the Polish Witold Bańka, of being a servant in the service of China who was discrediting its organization. The IOC finally intervened. On the eve of the opening of Paris, when it awarded the 2030 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, it added a clause: if the United States persisted in questioning WADA’s independence, the award could be revoked. It also warned that the anti-doping law passed under Donald Trump, by which the United States arrogates the right to pursue and punish doping throughout the world, violates international law.
China remained silent. It worked in the shadows. Just after its star swimmer, Zhanle Pan, won the final of the star distance, the 100m freestyle, in which the two Americans finished last, Reuters, in an exclusive report, revealed that in recent years USADA had covered up several cases of doping by some of its top athletes, who had not even been sanctioned, in exchange for their working as informants who would allow them to go higher up the doping chain. This practice, typical of the fight against drug trafficking, is not contemplated in the World Anti-Doping Code. WADA informed USADA of this. Chinese television opened its news with the news.
The next Games, Los Angeles 28, the land of Hollywood and Disney fantasy, will have a hard time improving on these, unless the athletes, the kings of Paris 24, remain and persist, and continue to impose their talent and brilliance.
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