The Olympics You Remember Are Back
Tara Davis-Woodhall, a long jumper by trade and an entertainer at heart, gazed into the stands at Tokyo’s 68,000-seat Olympic stadium and decided she needed some noise. In a quixotic bid to inject even a small dose of spirit into a pandemic-stricken Summer Games, she began clapping her hands theatrically.
Tens of people, give or take, clapped back.
“It was awful,” Davis-Woodhall said last month about the enforced emptiness of the Olympics three summers ago. “It was my first Olympics, and I was like, ‘What the heck? This is weird!’ I’m glad it’s over, and I’m glad that I’m going to Paris to actually experience an Olympics.”
Countless athletes like Davis-Woodhall — those who have competed in an Olympics but not truly experienced one — have arrived in Paris this month in search of the same thing: normal Games.
Because normalcy, at the Olympics, is grandeur. It is the distinct cocktail of sound and color produced by the gathering of more than 200 national teams and millions of fans. It is athletes climbing into the stands to celebrate with family and friends, or to be consoled by them. It is crowds cheering for sports they do not typically watch.
All of this was missing at the coronavirus-delayed Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021 and the Winter Games in Beijing a year later. Both were sequestered from society and almost entirely denuded of life and fervor.
The International Olympic Committee and its member nations keenly understood all that was lost. They have sensed an opportunity in Paris to restore that Olympic feeling, to re-establish how the Games should look and feel and to welcome back commercial partners and fans.
“The tone is completely different,” said Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. “We now have permission to have fun.”
The merrymaking had a head start on Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony, with the Games’ soft opening: a small slate of soccer and rugby matches around the country.
It was merely an appetizer, but in a single sun-splashed afternoon at the Stade de France, just north of the capital, the Paris Games became everything the Tokyo Olympics were not.
The stands were jammed and rippling with energy, particularly when the host, France, grappled to a draw with the United States in a rugby sevens match. Flags were waved. Slogans were chanted: “Allez les Bleus!”
Stephen Tomasin, 29, a member of the U.S. team, was one of many athletes on Wednesday who were awe-struck by the atmosphere in the stadium, which holds more than 80,000 spectators.
“It’s what you dream about: a packed stadium in an Olympic opener,” he said. “It doesn’t get much better than this.”
It has been almost a decade since this sort of pomp was seen at the Summer Games. The Tokyo Olympics were a shell of the normal spectacle, with eerily quiet venues and muted celebrations. The Winter Games in Beijing several months later unfolded largely behind barbed wire, in what Chinese organizers called a “closed loop” and one athlete called “sports prison.” The biggest sporting event in the world had never felt so small.
But competitors at those pandemic Games were just as rueful about missing the subtle elements, like the spontaneous camaraderie of the athletes’ village or the presence of family to celebrate or commiserate in some of the most emotional moments of the athletes’ careers.
“The cafeteria in Tokyo was humongous,” said Luis Grijalva, 25, a Guatemalan long-distance runner competing in Paris. “Sitting there, when it was empty, it felt like eating in a warehouse.”
The American weight lifter Jourdan Delacruz, 26, described the Tokyo Games in one word: isolating. She recalled falling far short of her expectations in competition and finding no one to lean on. Her favorite memory of that summer, she said, was seeing her friends and family at the airport after a lonely flight back to the United States.
“I got to still have a good Olympic experience,” she said of the reunion, “just not at the Olympics.”
She wants to perform better in Paris, of course, but she also wants to experience the Olympics as they are meant to be experienced. She wants to wave to screaming fans at the opening and closing ceremonies. She wants to attend other events and befriend athletes from different sports and far-flung nations. She wants to linger and explore the city — and not alone.
“I have a lot of friends and family coming to Paris ,” she said. “Like, a lot.”
Paris organizers announced this month that 8.6 million tickets had been sold, breaking the record of 8.3 million set at the Atlanta Games in 1996. They expect that figure to rise before the Games end on Aug. 11.
After the alienation of two pandemic Games, the Paris Olympics will be woven into the very fabric of the city, with a grandiose opening ceremony that will snake along the Seine on Friday and events at iconic sites like the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais and the Palace of Versailles.
“Paris 2024 is a reset for the Olympic brand,” said Terrence Burns, a longtime Olympic marketing consultant.
Even before the pandemic, Mr. Burns said, the image of the Games had faltered, plagued by political tensions, doping scandals and less-than-inspiring locales.
Television ratings for the Games have slumped in the United States since the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Burns said one had to look back to London in 2012 to find “the last truly globally successful Summer Games in a destination city.”
Paris could be the next one, and Olympic leaders do not want to squander the opportunity.
Hirshland, the president of the U.S.O.P.C., said there were serious implications this summer for every national Olympic committee but particularly for her own: The next Summer Games will be in Los Angeles in 2028. She said the resumption of a normal Olympic cycle would translate directly to revenue.
“Interest and engagement from the consumer drives every dollar we make in some capacity, whether it’s a commercial sponsor, a broadcast-rights deal or even a philanthropic donor,” she said. “And as a result, the stakes are higher for us.”
But Hirshland was just as focused on reviving the experience for fans and athletes.
Among the most enthusiastic will be Davis-Woodhall, 25, the long jumper, who said the Paris Games had been on her “dream board” since the misery of her time in Tokyo.
When she claps on the purple track this summer at the Stade de France, she hopes tens of thousands of people in the crowd will clap back. When she jumps, she wants to give them a reason to roar. And afterward, she will change into her signature cowboy boots, strut around the track and, if all goes well, luxuriate in their love.
“Now I get to live out my moment,” she said.
Rory Smith and Talya Minsberg contributed reporting.
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