Is Paris Ready To Embrace Its Olympic Moment?

In a live television interview from Paris’s Grand Palais – the centrepiece of this year’s Olympic Games, which open on 26 July – Emmanuel Macron set out his ambitions for the country’s athletes in much the same way he might outline a political manifesto.

- Kim Willsher

They had one goal: to take enough medals to be among the Games’ top five Olympic and top eight Paralympic nations. He was putting pressure on them, he said this month – previously described as “healthy pressure” – but the goal was “absolutely attainable”. The economics magazine Challenges reported Macron as going further, saying: “The success of these Olympic Games depends first and foremost on the success of our athletes.”

It was the French president in full Jupiterian mode – his nickname is the all-powerful, all-controlling Roman god – suggesting that, in sport as in politics, almost anything is possible with enough effort. The subtext was clear: it was not enough for the nation’s Olympians to be taking part; what would count was winning.

Sceptics pointed out that France had not reached the medals table top five since the 1948 London Olympics when it came third, but at a time when there were fewer top-level sporting nations. The sports data firm Gracenote backed Macron and predicted France would enjoy the traditional advantage of hosting the Games and take 55 medals, reaching fourth place.

Political pundits saw the national “how-many-medals” guessing game Macron had sparked as part of an Élysée operation to inject much-needed interest into the Olympics among a public that has, until now, been at best apathetic, at worst hostile.