PARIS – Olympic chief Thomas Bach said he was “very satisfied” with the state of preparations for the Olympic Village of the Paris 2024 Summer Games, after a visit to the new building north of the French capital on Dec 1.
“As an Olympian, it’s always a great moment to be in an Olympic Village,” said Bach, who won the fencing team gold for West Germany at the 1976 Games and now heads the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
“Every Olympian will tell you that once the Games are over and he’s meeting other Olympic athletes, after one minute at the latest, they will both speak about the Olympic Village and the experience they had there.
“This is where the heart of the Olympic Games will beat.”
Bach called the Village, which will house 14,500 athletes and their staff, “really spectacular: it’s compact, it’s very pragmatic”.
“You see not only me but the entire IOC executive board very, very happy and very satisfied with the Village and with the state of preparations,” he said.
The Village covers the equivalent of 70 football pitches.
It will also host 9,000 competitors for the Paralympic Games that follow the July 26-Aug 11 Olympics.
It will then become “a part of the surrounding city, for people in Seine-Saint-Denis”.
The chief organiser of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Tony Estanguet, said he expected no surprises before the completion of the Village in the city’s northern surburbs at the end of December, with the handover of keys scheduled for early March.
“The timings are perfectly respected,” insisted Estanguet, a three-time Olympic gold medallist for France in canoeing.
Bach batted off criticism by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo who said that, while the Games infrastructure will be ready, “there are two things for which we will not be ready”, namely transport and also the problem of homelessness.
“Our partner is the organising committee and there’s been no split with them,” he said.
In a separate address to the media, the head of the Paris region’s transport authority, Valerie Pecresse, said almost doubling the price of metro tickets during the Paris Olympics was “fair”.
Single tickets will be sold for €4 (S$5.80), compared to €2.10 now, and 10-ticket blocks for €32, compared to €16.90 currently.
Looking ahead to France’s potential performance, Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera underlined her “obviously demanding” goal of the country finishing in the top five in the overall medal table.
France finished eighth at the Tokyo Olympics with 10 golds, 12 silvers and 11 bronzes.
It would take a significant leap to get close to the 71-medal haul (20 golds, 28 silvers, 23 bronzes) that athletes representing the Russian Olympic Committee achieved to finish fifth in the Japanese capital.
France’s largest-ever haul of golds was 15 at the 1996 Atlanta Games, as statistics presented on Dec 1 indicated that a host country normally multiplied its Olympic titles by “between 1.5 and 2.3 per cent”.
That offers a glimmer of hope, albeit thanks to a calculator, of France attaining the ambitious medal goal on home soil. AFP
