The right Games in the perfect place:

how Paris revitalised Olympic dream

- Sean Ingle

Four months after Paris 2024's spectacular finale, starring Tom Cruise abseiling off the top of the Stade de France and hurtling out of a plane above Los Angeles, the executive director of the Olympics is mulling over the lasting impact of the Games. Albeit with the help of a rather different cinematic icon.

"I was making a presentation to Deloitte executives recently," says Christophe Dubi, the man responsible for planning and delivering the Olympics. "And I started by paraphrasing the Stranger in The Big Lebowski: 'Sometimes, there is a man, he's the man for his time and place, he was The Dude.' Because Paris really was the right Games, at the right time and place."

Warming to his theme, he says: "There were a lot of geopolitical tensions, with people upset about just about everything every day. And suddenly you have this breath of fresh air, unfolding under our eyes, at a moment where it was needed."

At the Paris 2024 headquarters, meanwhile, its chief executive, Etienne Thobois, offers his own summary of those 17 days of joyous madness. "You always hope," he says. "But you don't really believe it until you see it. It was intense, exciting and, well, fabulous."

Every day brought fresh heroes and dramatic new storylines. To British ears the names Keely Hodgkinson, Alex Yee and Tom Pidcock are enough to slip the mind back in time. Leon Marchand, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Yuto Horigome went global, while Raygun, the Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec and the Rubik's cube gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik went viral.