Two weeks to save the Games – can Paris 2024 restore the dream factory? | Barney Ronay

On Friday the Olympics swing into full action, but can the spectacle still drown the detail, cost, greed and waste?

“We need to re-enthuse.” This was probably the closest Emmanuel Macron came to a tearful cri de cœur during his latest address on the eve of France’s Olympic Games. It is a reasonable enough statement in itself, although one that may be more accurate with the removal of the “re” part. Welcome to Paris 2024, the 33rd modern Olympic Games, and the first to have basically crept up over your shoulder with a shrug and a pffft and an arch of the brow.

Worrying about the Olympics is of course an Olympic tradition in its own right. The temptation is always there to fret over the scale, the purity, the basic vitality of this four-yearly global anachronism.