Who better than Andrea Goldstein could put together a comprehensive picture of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, profiling not only sports but also economics, politics and customs? All of us now, after we stop walking to go hoeing or to the factory or office, work in an armchair, except to go out into the streets and run like marathon runners.
Goldstein published for Il Mulino types “When Winning Matters, Politics and Economics of the Olympics” (March 2024). The Olympics are the global intersection of sports with everything else going on in the world. The Olympic Committee “forced” the Taliban administration in Afghanistan to send at least three male and three female athletes to Paris. The pope has called for an Olympic truce, there where people are running for their lives.
Andrea Goldstein is one of those people whose mold has been lost, not ubiquitous in the media or boastful, but important because of the role they play and the contribution they make to development through important international structures such as the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the World Bank, the UN (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), as executive director of Nomisma Italy. He writes for major Italian and French newspapers (he lives in Paris) and is a senior advisor to the government of Myanmar. He is a founding member of a well-deserving foundation, “M&M Minima Moralia, Ideas for a Better Country,” which brings together 250 people including managers, economists, scientists, diplomats, journalists, public leaders, entrepreneurs and academics. Here is the interview for The Newyorker by Andrea Goldstein:
What should be emphasized for the Paris Games?
First, it is the centennial Olympics, and Paris is the city of De Coubertin. This is important from the symbolic aspect. 1924 was also the first year of the Winter Games, also in France. Much has changed in the meantime, and from the important thing is to participate we have moved to the important thing is to win. This is because today’s athletes are professionals, because each nation also intends to promote its soft power through sports, and because sponsors invest hundreds of millions.
They take place while wars are being fought, one in Europe…
It is a difficult historical moment: the war in Ukraine directly touches the border between two divergent areas, unlike the “peripheral” wars of the Cold War, and the same goes for the conflict in the Middle East. Also relevant is French President Macron’s decision to postpone the formation of a new government until after the Games. Terrorist actions are also feared: all of Paris is armored and traffic is at a standstill.
What about from a sports point of view?
These are the first in which the organizing country and the IOC have planned to reduce costs. This will be achieved starting with less construction of sports infrastructure, as will also be the case for Los Angeles 2028 and the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina. In the case of Paris, the only major facility is the large Olympic swimming pool. The rest is already in the ground, or temporary and recyclable structures have been built that will be demolished later and cost relatively little. As for where the sporting events will take place, I would say that perhaps only Rome used locations that were as historically and architecturally striking.
What about the athletes?
Many of them will be unknown, not only because they come from small countries but because they practice uncommon disciplines. Then there are particular human stories: athletes who had to endure political, personal, religious problems in order to go to Paris…For Italy, too, these will be important Olympics, not only because the ’26 Winter Olympics will be next, but because Italy is sending the largest ever team of athletes, moreover with new figures, no longer the traditional ones of soccer or basketball but Sinner (stopped by an illness, but Italian tennis is in great shape anyway, see Paolini). Then we are strong in women’s volleyball, not to mention water polo, swimming grappling with the post Federica Pellegrini, archery, fencing…
At the European Athletics Championships we did very well, of course at the Olympics there will be more competitors from different nations however, if in Tokyo we came in 10th place with 40 medals, in Paris Nielsen Gracenote predicts a seventh place…
We have many athletes and therefore more chances to win medals. It is clear that Tamberi or Jacobs or Paolini in tennis have a better chance than others, but one must take into account that one wins or loses by a tenth of a second or an inch.However, the good organization of our sports movement should be mentioned. We are always ready to blame the institutions, which in sports work efficiently.
…Merit also goes to the spread–sometimes more healthful than healthy–of personal sports, especially gyms, jogging, cycling and padel tennis…
If more people are participating in sports-as around the world-the physical and ethnic characteristics have also changed: more and more athletes are competing for teams other than their nation of origin, and are naturalized or immigrants or children of immigrants. For example, Andy Diaz, a Cuban triple jumper who was naturalized Italian a year ago and who only from August 1 will be Italian, will therefore be competing in Paris for the first time as an Italian. Then there are the “new italians” such as Paola Egonu, who is a sports star.
Turning to “political athletes,” wasn’t Mao Zedong’s swim in the Yang-Tze River a bit too much like the Seine River swim by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo with the prefect of Ile de France and the president of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee? Certainly it was to “certify” the cleanliness of the water of France’s best-known river, while today it is no longer possible to swim in the Yang-Tze, whose water is not at all swimmable…
There has been an aspect of rhetoric, but it is about bringing out the results of the fight against pollution, one of the most important issues around the world. …For example, if Rome were to bid again for the Olympics, it would be nice to have, with the occasion, a swimmable Tiber again. These are the positive legacies of the Games.
So is the sports society more innovative than other social categories?
Another innovation of Paris 2024 is that medaled athletes will receive a monetary award from the international federation, in addition to the national federations. I’m talking about the athletics federation.
Staying on environmental issues, there has been controversy over the lack of air conditioners in the Olympic village and cardboard beds for athletes.
By now it is from Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo that even medals come from recycling electronic devices that contain small amounts of gold. The Olympic flashlight itself is made of recycled aluminum. These achievements are certainly only of symbolic value, but they are important for the environment. On the other hand, among the goals not achieved in these Olympics is the failure to involve local businesses and artisans in providing services and goods to the organization. There are indeed overly demanding and complicated protocols. Also only partially achieved is the goal of including the handicapped in the staff, even though it goes in the direction that is one of the values of Olympic sports, namely the spirit of brotherhood.
Staying on the theme of brotherhood and solidarity, the opening to professionalism still sounds wrong to many people. Athletes such as golfer John Rahm, who grosses 218 million a year (second only to soccer player Ronaldo), and basketball player Le Bron james, who earns 128 million, will actually participate in the Olympics.
Certainly today a Ceo like Carlos Tavares of Stellantis earns hundreds of times more than Fiat CEO Vittorio Valletta or Marchionne himself. Scarlett Johansson earns much more-net of inflation-than Sophia Loren did. The whole world has changed and inequalities have increased in sports as well.Rome 1960 was in some ways the pinnacle of the Decubertian Olympics. If the number of athletes increased a lot, the number of people on the planet increased tenfold, in a century, so the chances of going to the Olympics decreased.
After all, competitive sports have reverberated more and more among “ordinary people”: walking at a fast pace costs nothing, is good for you, and almost anyone can do it…
Of course, as long as you don’t expect to run the 100 meters in 9”!
The article The important thing is to win: interview with Andrea Goldstein on the Olympics comes from TheNewyorker.
