The Olympics assessed

We are now more than a week beyond the opening ceremony ruined by rain which set the tone for an Olympiad not living up to expectation.

Scarcely a day goes by without some scandalous happening – the latest being the barring of running Goddess Sha’carri Richardson to the stadium for the 100m.

Now the official line is that she was injured in a warm- up, as was the similarly barred Jamaican Shelley Pryce Fraser.

This came fast on the heels  of the Algerian transgender boxer Imane Khalef competing for gold in women’s boxing, who effectively beat up and scared the life out of his female Italian opponent and now has a bronze medal.

Before that the pollution of the Seine caused the postponement of the Triathlon for which the organiser Aurelia Merle refused to apologise to those that had tickets, let alone refund them for the event. To train for such an event of endurance requires exceptional stamina and determination and such athletes deserve better.

There have been numerous references from the rights holder broadcaster  Discovery TNT/Eurosport channel to the glories of Paris as a city.

I was more interested in the more unsavoury aspects of its history: e.g. the ‘Terreur ‘ after the 1789 Storming of the Bastille,  in which thousands were put to their death including many who had set up the Republic.

Then fast-forward to Paris under occupation by the Nazis and the puppet Vichy government of Maréchal Pétain. The Vichy Police rounded up thousands of Parisien Jews – and young children were taken from their parents and held in appalling conditions in the winter velodrome – and, unwanted by Vichy’s Lords and Masters in Berlin, were eventually despatched in cattle trucks supervised by the Vichy Police to the camps. The chief organiser? René Bouswiet, head of the Vichy police, who after the war headed up the Banque Indosuez.

France had two sons, Pétain and Charles de Gaulle (who was sentenced as a traitor) and, after rewriting French support of the Nazis, showed little post-War gratitude to those that put him up during the War.

There is a continuum of arrogance – “We are Parisiennes and can do what we like” – that I have perceived in many trips to the city.

I know one person that refuses to watch any of it but I, if conflicted, do. It’s a gathering of world athletes who have shown such dedication to get to the top of often a minority uncovered sport.

One aspiring journalist Tom Kershaw in The Times pointed out that the medal-achieving Scottish swimmer Duncan Scott lost out to gold to a Chinese swimmer Ping who was banned after the last Olympics in Tokyo.

Sadly, such brave coverage does not extend to the evening TV presenters who seem more interested in what new outfit to wear than the issues of the games.  There are also a regrettable tendencies towards endlessly identifying celebs and inarticulate ex-athletes giving lengthy and interminable interviews who actually say nothing.

Presumably these presenters have been directed  to ‘big up’ the Olympics and are unconcerned – or unaware – that the viewer might have a insight into what’s going and on might want some discussion of this.

Yet, for all of this, you do get a glimpse of the Olympic ideal.

One such athlete was the St. Lucian gold medallist Julien Alfred. She was St Lucia’s first ever medallist and – to see the celebrations in her homeland – was indeed heart-warming.