“We’ll be ready!” At the microphone of BFMTV Monday evening, the Minister of Sports was reassuring a few months before the 2024 Olympic Games.
Between July 26 and September 8, France will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games on its territory. On the first day of the year, the Minister of Sports was interviewed by BFMTV on Monday evening. The opportunity for her to reassure the worried and to contradict the detractors of these two world events. “The Games are in 207 days now, so a little less than seven months,” she immediately stated, before firmly assuring: “We will be ready in all dimensions of the organization : security, transport, welcoming tourists, the construction of the Olympic and Paralympic structures which is already extremely well advanced.”
Welcoming the teams who are working “very hard to be ready”, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra affirmed that the event will be “a very beautiful popular celebration”, but also that it will make it possible to “leave to the French a lasting, useful heritage, with notably a strengthened place for sport in our society”.
Quickly questioned on the subjects that anger her, the Minister of Sports was optimistic while remaining realistic. The opening ceremony on the Seine? “We have a certain number of adjustment variables on which we can play, such as the gauge [of spectators, editor’s note], the volume of festivities which will be authorized around the Seine in Paris. […] We also have elements adjustment on the parade and on the artistic dimension of this ceremony.” Mentioning an extreme scenario herself, such as terrorist attacks, she asserted that “there must be alternatives.” Concerning the swimming events in the Seine, the minister declared that the authorities are “today completely optimistic about [their] capacities to have these events” in the river.
Finally, on the subject of transport, a point on which the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, threw a wrench into the pond on November 22, affirming that we would “not be ready”, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra admitted that it This is a “most difficult” and “most demanding” project. But here again, she reassured, the teams are hard at work: “We know that we still have work ahead of us, but today we are not behind in the delivery of the various infrastructure.” The minister took the opportunity to discuss the “very important” work currently being carried out to make transport accessible to all, as well as “transport plans which are designed to have plans B, plans C or alternatives”. And to conclude: “All the sites of the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be served in satisfactory conditions with 100% public transport solutions.”
