IIt must feel strange. You are responsible for managing the biggest event your country has ever organized. You’ve been working on this to the exclusion of basically everything else in your life for nearly a decade. Now──there is still one week left.
“It’s a very strange feeling,” confirmed 2024 Olympic organizing committee chairman Tony Estanguet. “I’m from this small town in the southwest of France. My sport is a very small sport. It’s been… a journey. But I’m here. Now, okay, we’re all here.
The 2024 Paris Olympics – with 10,500 competitors, 329 events, 4,500 staff, 40,000 volunteers, 10 million spectators, and 4 billion TV viewers – kicked off on Friday with 160 ships lining the A “unique” parade on the Seine: the opening ceremony of the first Olympic Games was attempted outside the stadium.
Watched by more than 45,000 police and security personnel, the national team will drive past Notre Dame, across bridges such as the Pont des Arts and the Pont Neuf, and up to the Eiffel Tower, with 300,000 spectators along the Seine watching from the sidelines and accompanied by a sound and light Spectacular lights and music.
Estanguet, a soft-spoken and unassuming three-time Olympic champion who won individual kayak slalom gold at the Sydney, Athens and London Olympics, is very close to former England football coach Gareth Southgate. resemblance. For him, Friday couldn’t come soon enough. “This was the first big moment. The moment when we showed the world that these games are really going to make a difference,” he said, sipping a soft drink in an abandoned bar across the square from the organizing committee’s headquarters in Saint-Denis, a suburb in northern Paris. said. “We really have to push it really, really hard.”
Estengate, 46, said the Olympics “are a once-in-a-century event for every host country. It’s a once-in-a-century opportunity to showcase what it does best – to do something truly spectacular.” ——The most jaw-dropping sports event.
He said that from the first stage of the 2015 campaign, the organizing team’s slogan has been “bold and ambitious”. “Paris is an extraordinary city and we wanted to do something extraordinary and really different – make the city itself the venue. Play sports outside the stadiums as much as possible.
Fifteen of the city’s most famous landmarks have become event venues: fencing competitions at the Grand Palais, archery competitions at Les Invalides, beach volleyball competitions at the Champ de Mars next to the Eiffel Tower. Pont Alexandre III offers road cycling and marathon swimming; Place de la Concorde hosts BMX, basketball, break dancing and skateboarding; and equestrian competitions are held at the Palace of Versailles.
In addition to providing high-quality television broadcast services, the project will make the Paris Olympics more sustainable than previous Olympic Games through temporary venues, green initiatives, new sports for young urban audiences and greater public participation. These include the “National Marathon” on the same track as the Olympic Games.
Despite Estenger’s outward self-confidence, ambition and audacity are not qualities he lacks. Born in the Pyrenean town of Pau to parents who were physical education teachers, he grew up to be a top athlete when he had to compete with his admired brother for France’s only spot in the canoe slalom at the Sydney Olympics.
“I’ve always looked up to him; he was my role model,” he said. “When I was little, I used to watch him at the bank. He later taught me a lot. He took me to the top. For many years the brothers competed together as members of France’s European and World Canoe Slalom Championship team .
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Estenguet’s younger brother Patrice (five years older) won a bronze medal. But as the Olympic qualifying tournament progressed, the brothers realized they would have to compete against each other to qualify for the French team. “It’s hard,” he said. “I’ve always admired and respected him. But he handled it extremely well. A year ago, he sat me down and said, ‘Listen, we can only get through this if we go our separate ways. We have to preserve our relationship.
Toni (just) won the French qualifiers and won the gold medal in Sydney (“for Patrice, really, because he could have done it, and for me too”). Four years later, in Athens, he did it again – beating the man who would become his greatest rival in two decades’ time by 12/100ths of a second.
Slovak slalom kayaker Michal Martikán is Estanget’s toughest and most consistent opponent, having won two Olympic gold medals to the Frenchman’s three. Estenguet said his rivalry with Madican is “an important part of my story,” as is his relationship with Patrice. “He is a genius. We are very different. He is small but very strong, very technical and very tight. My style is smoother, softer, more fluid. Competition like this teaches us determination. And patience.
He needed both in 2008, when he proudly led France to the title. Tricolor At the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Estangue failed to advance to the finals and was eventually won by Madikan. “This is the first time I’ve suffered such a serious defeat at this level,” he said.
“When you lose miserably at the Olympics, when you’re the defending champion, the favorite – it’s hard to accept. I was 30 years old and competing in my third Olympics. It was hard for me to give up. Instead, he turned to his brother.
“I just said to him, ‘I want you to come train me and help me get my motivation back,'” he said. “He said yes. So we had one last great adventure together.
With Patrice’s help, Estanguet became world champion in 2009 and 2010, European champion in 2011, and Olympic gold medalist in 2012. That’s because I may have defeated Beijing, but I didn’t disintegrate. I stayed calm, picked myself up, and regained my confidence.
Estanget had been studying sports management for two years and when he gave up elite competition after the London Olympics, he knew sports management was the way forward for him. He was elected to the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission, the first French athlete to be so elected.
Already active in the International Canoe Federation and the World Anti-Doping Agency, he was later elected to the French National Olympic Committee, where he learned “about sport – politics, economics and diplomacy. A steep learning curve” ”.
In 2016, he was appointed co-chairman of France’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics, and by 2017, when Paris was officially awarded the Olympics after Los Angeles agreed to postpone the Games, “I was in a completely different world.
“We were 50 people in Paris. Now we have 4,000 people. It’s just… huge.
So, does a stellar athletic career prepare you for Olympic-sized organizational challenges? Estenge knows exactly what elite athletes can and cannot contribute. “In fact, admit your ambition,” he said. “As an athlete, if your goal is to be in the top 10, you’re not going to win very often. But it doesn’t always go well. But it’s crucial – if I’m doing this job, these Olympics have to be very Unusual.
Rigor, discipline and responsibility are key. “Understand that you have to train every day, work hard at things you don’t know how to do, and know that you can’t get angry when things go wrong. Take responsibility and make sure your decisions are the right ones because you’ve put in the work.
“In sport, nothing happens the way you imagine. There’s always a competitor you know nothing about, the weather… you have to deal with it.” said: So it’s not going to go as planned, but I There are solutions. And often they happen instantly.
The 2024 Paris Olympics also encountered many unexpected challenges. The coronavirus pandemic has created uncertainty for several years. Afterwards, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered inflation and forced some difficult sacrifices.
“When you’re talking about a budget of 4 billion euros, an inflation rate of 15 percent is a very big problem,” Estanguet said. “We had to cut back on the number of sites.”
Gymnastics and basketball, which had been separate venues, were now merged; the shooting, which had been held at temporary venues in the city, was moved to the National Shooting Center, a two-hour drive away.
and teamwork. “Even in an individual sport, you need a good team,” Estenguet said. “Organizing the Olympics is the greatest collective effort. Athletes, security and transport personnel, politicians, unions, sponsors, police, local officials… all have to work at roughly the same speed and in the same direction. That’s work.
Estengat recognized some skills he didn’t have but needed. “Public speaking,” he said. “When you have to speak to heads of state, to rich people, to great athletes who are your sports idols… I’m not good at that. I took a lot of classes. Now I’m okay with it.
The opening ceremony is now less than a week away. Any worries? The French, especially Parisians, are notoriously cantankerous and difficult to please, but Estanguet says he was inspired by his many conversations with the great middle-distance champion Seb Coe at the London Olympics .
“So far, everything has happened exactly as he said it would,” he said. “A few years ago no one was interested in it. A few years ago, so many people were interested in it and wanted to be a part of it. The last year was very, very hard work.
Relief will come “when your country wins its first medal,” Coe told Estanguet. So I’ll be ready for that. Meanwhile, he was happy to swim in the Seine with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on the morning of the interview. After a costly cleanup program and months of doubts, the river is finally considered clean.
“It was a great, symbolic moment,” he said. “It encapsulates what we want this Olympics to be: spectacular, with athletes swimming in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. That’s magic. And invested in it. We will leave behind a river that people can swim in.”
