TOKYO — Tony Estanguet needs to speak about how the following Olympic Video games, in Paris in 2024, shall be a paradigm-shifting second for an occasion that has come beneath hearth for turning into too bloated, too expensive, too onerous for the residents of the locations the place the quadrennial sporting jamboree lands.
Estanguet needs to speak about sustainability plans, how 95 p.c of the venues are already constructed and the way measures are in place to make sure the price range of seven.5 billion euros ($8.8 billion) for the Video games won’t balloon when the occasion nears, as Olympic budgets tend to do.
However all of that has to attend. The primary activity for Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 Olympic organizing committee, is to determine plan an occasion for which preparations are more likely to be affected by a pandemic now properly into its second yr. Estanguet introduced dozens of employees members to Japan to shadow organizers of the Tokyo Video games — maybe essentially the most difficult, strangest Olympics in historical past — and to discover ways to take a layered plan years within the making and rewrite it on the fly.
“No one is aware of what’s going to occur with this pandemic,” stated Estanguet, a three-time Olympic champion in canoe slalom, “so we have now to be prepared for any sort of situation.”
On the Tokyo Video games, he and his colleagues have visited stadiums and arenas the place among the world’s best athletes have carried out with out spectators. He has met with some officers to debate the finer factors of biosecurity, after which sat down with others to study concerning the successes — and failures — of bubble environments.
“The learnings of right here is that it’s possible to arrange the Video games even with this sort of scenario,” Estanguet stated. “So we’re right here to study.”
Estanguet stated the Paris officers would stay in Tokyo for additional talks after the Video games finish on Sunday, after which do the identical form of shadowing program with organizers of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the place restrictions on motion and well being protocols are more likely to be much more stringent than they’ve been in Tokyo.
But Estanguet stays hopeful that the coronavirus pandemic shall be one thing for the historical past books by the point the Summer season Video games arrive in France.
“We’ll take a look at all of the measures they put in place right here, however we’re nonetheless engaged on our Plan A,” he stated. “I would like my workforce first to be at the most effective stage with Plan A.”
That plan is firmly underway. A sponsorship goal of 1 billion euros has simply handed the midway mark, and the eager curiosity of each France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has already helped clear administrative hurdles.
Macron, identified to be a sports activities fan, was a visual presence for the primary a part of the Tokyo Video games, hopping from venue to venue. Hidalgo shall be Paris’s consultant on the closing ceremony.
“We depend on our capability to have all of them actually engaged,” Estanguet stated.
Estanguet identified that the federal government had adopted a technique — constructed across the Olympics — that for the primary time requires each major college in France to put aside half-hour a day for bodily exercise. That, Estanguet stated, was an instance of the advantages of the Video games, already in place three years earlier than the opening ceremony.
Such legacies have been promised by hosts earlier than, after all, solely to fizzle out not lengthy after the Olympic flame goes darkish. As a substitute, the Video games have usually been adopted by recriminations over prices and tales of pricey venues fallen into disuse. Estanguet refused predict whether or not Paris would meet its personal set of lofty guarantees, however stated the circumstances have been in place to take action.
“I can inform you that we have now management of our price range yearly from the general public authorities, and to date we’re nonetheless operating with the identical price range,” he stated. “So I can’t assure you, however the whole lot is put in place for this new mannequin.”
