The President announced this Friday, September 13, his wish to establish an annual sports festival, like the Fête de la Musique, in an interview with “Le Parisien”. He spoke out in favor of maintaining the Olympic cauldron “for as long as possible” and, at least temporarily, the rings on the Eiffel Tower.
Another legacy of the Olympics? Riding on the craze that the Games have generated in the capital and across the country, Emmanuel Macron wants to establish a “national sports day” every year on September 14, he announced this Friday, September 13, in an interview with the daily newspaper The Parisian. “I want French people everywhere to take up their sport through demonstrations and competitions, with young and old alike. This will allow us to restart, for the start of the school year, the practice of sport on a daily basis,” he said.
The date would therefore coincide with that of the great parade of athletes of the Olympic and Paralympic Games on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, which is to be held on Saturday. The head of state imagines a “popular sports festival, which is spreading [rait] in the streets, schools, dedicated sports complexes. In our cities, our villages, our neighborhoods.”
Another presidential announcement this Friday evening: the creation of a specific decorative order for the actors of the Games – in addition to the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit awarded to medal-winning athletes at Saturday’s parade. This promotion of the 2024 Olympic Games will be published at the end of the year. It will go “from the volunteer to the RATP agent, from the police officer to Celine Dion», details Emmanuel Macron.
Leave the rings and the basin
In the same interview, the head of state also welcomed the decision of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to leave the Olympic rings hanging on the Eiffel Tower, at least until the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. “It was good not to take them off right away, she was right,” he estimated. Enough to suggest that the State will give its approval to the announcement of the socialist elected official to keep the rings until the next Olympic Games in four years, “maybe” beyond. And this, while many voices have been raised against this project which would come “to denature” the work of Gustave Eiffel – from the resigning Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, to the engineer’s heirs, who see it as a “alteration that undermines respect for the work of their ancestor.”
In the same vein, Emmanuel Macron would like to keep “as long as possible” the Olympic cauldron, which floats above the Tuileries Gardens». Unlike the contested adornment of the Iron Lady, this idea has received the support of many Parisians and political leaders. Especially since other Olympic host cities have already done so, from Barcelona to Sochi via Grenoble.
Clearly very concerned about the mark that the Games could leave – and the image that could be associated with his five-year term – Emmanuel Macron also called for a cross-party parliamentary commission to analyse their legacy. “The idea is to take stock of everything that has worked well […] and take inspiration from it for the future”he said. And to cite the real estate heritage of the Olympic village in Seine-Saint-Denis. “We must live up to the spirit of the Games, to this national harmony that was expressed”he said. A decidedly voluble president, while he had promised to make himself smaller after his dissolution of the National Assembly and the appointment of a right-wing Prime Minister even though the left had taken the lead.
