Olympic Fans Can Eat, Drink And Cheer In A Mini World’s Fair In Paris Park

Sip a cool caipirinha cocktail in Brazil. Sample a spicy samosa in India. Boogie down with a DJ in France ‘til the early hours. Or, do all three in a day — and perhaps meet some athletes, too.

If you’re in Paris but don’t have tickets for the Olympics, organizers want you to know that you can spend your days — and boozy nights, too — at the Parc des Nations, or Nations Park, which is hosting 15 festive national team clubhouses in what amounts to a mini-World’s Fair on the edge of Paris.

The project gives a temporary new name to Parc de la Villette, a sprawling 135-acre (55-hectare) space in the northeastern corner of the capital. It opens Saturday, once Friday’s ambitious opening ceremony on the Seine River is over, along with its enormous security demands.

Imagine one huge, multicultural fan zone. The idea is for visitors to connect with each other, with Olympic athletes (who will come for medal celebrations) and with the Games themselves, organizers said.

“The slogan of these Olympics is ‘Games Wide Open,’ and we wanted to bring that to life,” said Amelie Guignabert of Paris 2024, the Olympic organizing committee. “We really believe in it.”

All they need, she noted, is the fans — and officials are advertising in the Paris Metro and elsewhere.

Certainly, there is room for them. The biggest house is not surprisingly, Club France, where there is capacity for 5,000 to 6,000 people inside and 20,000 in the outside spaces, which include two huge fields.
Other team clubhouses are Casa Brazil, Canada Team House, Casa Colombia, Czech House, India House, Casa Mexico, Team NL (Netherlands) House, Mongolia House, Serbian House, Slovak House, Slovenian House, Chinese Taipei Pavilion, Volia Space (Ukraine) and Ekhaya South Africa.
Inside Club France is a large stage, where athletes will appear after winning medals and where nightly music events will be offered, including sets from DJs like Bob Sinclar, said Arnaud Courtier, executive director of Club France.

“We like to party,” he said.

Fans can pay 5 euros ($5.42) and stay as long as they like, watching Olympic competitions on a giant screen and athlete interviews, cheering medal winners and buying food and drink. Or, they can buy a package that could run up to 385 euros ($418) for an all-night open bar and a prime spot on the stage.

Outside are some 20 makeshift pavilions designed by architecture students that house various French sports federations. Among other activities, visitors will be able to learn from coaches and try their hand at sports.

The project started with a decision to put Club France at La Villette, said Sophie-Justine Lieber, the park’s general director. Then, countries that didn’t have clubs elsewhere decided to join in.

The park, with its many structures, was able to accommodate particular needs — for example, Slovenia and the Czech Republic wanted places with kitchens to emphasize their national cuisines, and Mongolia wanted outdoor space to erect yurts, the traditional circular dwellings.

As for beach volleyball? That’s an attraction at Brazil’s house, along with music like samba and funk. And, of course, the national cocktail, caipirinha, as well as pao de queijo, the Brazilian cheese bread.

Organizers at India’s pavilion announced it was the country’s first house at an Olympics, a step toward their dream of bringing the Games one day to India.

India House spares no effort to highlight the country’s rich culture — it has brought in a huge loom, for example, where artisans are weaving traditional saris and carpets. Among many exhibits, one wall displays Gond art from the state of Madhya Pradesh, along with photos of every Indian athlete competing this year.

A key face among them: javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, a star in India who has 9 million Instagram followers.

There will be Indian food, of course — samosas, spiced chai tea, savory dhokla and more. Bollywood music will play, and fans will be able to try yoga and cricket.

Organizer B. Srinivasan, greeting the media Tuesday evening, declared these Games a perfect moment to introduce a new India and pointed to the many notables India has exported to the world – including political figures with Indian heritage like Rishi Sunak, the former British prime minister. And, in the most timely of references, Kamala Harris, the U.S. vice president who is now running for the top job after President Joe Biden ended his campaign for a second term.

BY JOCELYN NOVECK

Paris To Face Major Disruption Ahead Of Games Opening Ceremony, Says Police Chief

Paris will face major disruption ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony along the Seine on July 26, as organisers ramp up security measures to safeguard the event, the city's police chief said.

Organisers hope the opening ceremony, in which 160 boats carrying athletes from around the world will travel a 6 kilometre route along the Seine river towards the Eiffel tower, will deliver a jaw-dropping spectacle. Some 300,000 spectators will watch from the banks of the Seine as a global audience tunes in on TV.

But the ceremony is also a major security headache, taking place against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza. French President Emmanuel Macron has already floated the possibility of scrapping the river ceremony and reverting to at least two back-up plans if the security risks become untenable.

Paris residents with a view of the Seine can invite friends to watch the opening of the 2024 Summer Games from their balconies, but should prepare for heavy traffic and limited movement, Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said at a press conference.

Adjacent metro stations, most river crossings and all water traffic will be halted in the week before the open-air ceremony, Nunez said, adding that some bridges will remain open "in order not to cut Paris in two halves."

Everyone who wants to access the immediate surroundings of the Seine in the week before the Games will need to sign up on an online platform, Nunez said. Local residents hoping to access their homes, which are among the most prestigious addresses in France, will need to do the same.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, who also spoke at the event said the disruption would impact around 20,000 residents and business owners.

Asked about Macron's comments earlier this month, Nunez said his teams were still working on the 'Plan A' of the river ceremony.

"As of today, we have no reason to be worried," Nunez said.

https://www.reuters.com/authors/vincent-daheron/

As The Olympics Loom, Parisians Ask: Should We Skip Town? Games Organizers Work To Win Their Hearts

Before the Paris Olympics open and upend the French capital’s usual rhythms, retiree Pierre Schapira plans to hire a car and quit town.

But with the intense Olympic security measures and traffic disruptions they’ll cause, will that even be doable? For his answer, Schapira went straight to the top — popping the question this week to chief of police Laurent Nunez himself.

As he’s already done at other town hall meetings, did so again at this one, and will do at more to come, Nunez ever-so-patiently explained that Parisians are going to have to adapt to the July 26-Aug. 11 extravaganza but that it’s not going to put their lives and livelihoods on hold.

“It’s not going to stop you from entering or leaving Paris,” Nunez said Thursday to the audience of about 200 people, including some watching via video link in an overflow room next door.

Holding the Games in the bustling heart of such a compact city, rather than in a purpose-built Olympic park in the outskirts like Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and other previous hosts, was always going to rile and worry some Parisians who can be cantankerous at the best of times. Nunez, Games organizers and City Hall officials are finding that out for themselves as they embark on a concerted campaign to win Parisian hearts and minds and get people in the Olympic mood or, at least, get ready.

“We laugh about it ... because we are spending nearly all of our evenings together,” Deputy Paris Mayor Pierre Rabadan said after he, Nunez and other organizers spent more than two hours at the meeting detailing Games preparations and responding to questions.

“It’s quite time consuming but necessary,” Rabadan said. One of their aims, he added, is “to go against the talk at the moment that it’s better to leave, that being in Paris is going to be a catastrophe and whatnot. You get that at every Games and obviously we knew that because of our concept, we’d hear that, too.”

By mostly using existing sports venues as well as temporary ones that will be erected in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and at other iconic sites before being dismantled again, Paris’ goal is to avoid the legacy of waste and vast cost generated by other Games and reduce the mega-event’s environmental impact. Images of Olympians competing amid the architectural beauty of central Paris should, organizers and the government hope, make France shine.

But for the 2.1 million people who live within the city limits and hundreds of thousands of others who commute in from the suburbs, the consequences of 10,500 athletes competing in their midst are going to be considerable. Traffic restrictions, special permits for this and that, police checkpoints, road and Metro station closures, millions of visitors from elsewhere in France and around the world. The list goes on.

“It’s a fantastic gamble but it’s going to be quite disruptive for residents,” said 79-year-old Schapira after hearing Nunez and the other speakers.

Jean-Pierre Rollin, who owns two souvenir stores near Notre Dame Cathedral on its island in the River Seine, wanted to know whether tourists will be able to get past police checkpoints before and during the July 26 opening ceremony. It is being held on the river and a security cordon will be in place along both banks.

“If we have no customers, there’s no point staying open,” Rollin told Nunez. The police chief acknowledged the security that day is going to make getting around more complicated.

Other questions also focused on the impacts of security measures. One man asked whether there’ll still be fireworks for France’s July 14 national holiday and was told there will.

Only once, when a retailer said he’d heard that daytime deliveries would be banned, did the police chief lose patience, puffing out his cheeks.

Not true, he insisted.

“I can’t repeat things 50,000 times,” he said. “I don’t want to hear things like that.”

The work of preparing people clearly has a way to go. A government website, “Plan for the Games,” offers tips. Among them: avoid Olympic crowds on public transport by riding bikes or walking.

Schapira, the retired dentist and former politician, came out of the meeting thinking that “it is indeed extraordinary to have the Games inside Paris.”

But he was nevertheless grateful that he’ll be in the Alps by then, on holiday.

“I prefer to watch them on the television,” he said. “I’m not enough of a sports fan to stay. I am happy to be leaving.”

BY JOHN LEICESTER, AP

Paris Is Getting A Huge Whole New Metro Network, With A Targeted Opening For The Olympics

With gorgeous art nouveau entrances, maze-like tunnels and trains that rattle briskly under, and occasionally over, some of the world’s most famous streets, it’s a transport network that has inspired movies, novels and poetry.

It has stations named after a South American revolutionary, a US president and a Soviet victory. Fittingly, in a city that is home to some of the world’s most famous galleries, some of the stations are considered works of art in their own right.

But the Paris Métro railway system, built in the 1900s and now carrying nearly four million passengers every day, is struggling to cope with the demands of modern commuting, its ageing facilities and infrastructure creaking under the city’s growing population.

For many in Paris, particularly those living or working around its less fashionable outer suburbs, it’s a challenge to navigate across the city without having to route each journey through the central districts, adding travel time and worsening congestion.

But change is coming – and on a huge scale. The venerable Paris Métro is about to get its most significant upgrade in decades with the arrival of the Grand Paris Express, a new 200-kilometer (120-mile) system that will add four lines and 68 brand-new stations to the network.

These will mainly be connecting suburban towns without passing through the densely populated city of Paris – adding outer rings to an underground map of Paris that has, until now, been made of 14 lines that only reach out from the center like spokes.

It’s been an epic undertaking. Construction of the lines, which began in 2016, is the biggest civilian infrastructure project in Europe, according to the French government. Inevitably, given the scale, it has been hit by delays.

Driverless trains

But that didn’t stop the city from showing some Parisian pzazz late last month as the first train for the new Métro lines was taken for a test drive, attracting crowds of invited onlookers to a railway depot in the suburb of Champigy-sur-Marne.

The 108-meter-long six-car train, the first of its kind produced by Alstom for the Grand Paris Express, made its debut amid triumphal music and a light show of lasers in the French flag colors of white, blue and red.

“To change people’s lives, we will have to change how they move,” French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said at the November 28 event, which saw the train make a successful two-kilometer test run along a section of line 15, one of the new routes.

A rendering showing how part of Gare Villejuif, one of the stations on the new Grand Paris Express network, will look.

France hopes the Grand Paris Express will significantly cut transport time for suburb-to-suburb movement on public transit and reduce car usage for residents in the Greater Paris region.

Unlike other Métro lines, it will use driverless trains to create a fully automatic rapid transport network, meaning there will be no need to hire and train new drivers, plus there will be greater resilience against disruptions from strikes.

“We are on the right track for success,” Beaune laughed. “It will serve as a good example for cities across France.”

Paris was among the world’s first cities to have a metro system. Its first line opened in 1900 as part of the city’s construction efforts to host the Olympic Games that same year. It expanded rapidly and extensively during the decades that followed.

Prior to the opening of the Grand Paris Express, it had already evolved into a sprawling 800-kilometer mega system encompassing 16 central city metro lines and five Réseau Express Régional, or RER, commuter rail lines for the surrounding suburbs.

The new project will introduce four new lines – 15, 16, 17 and 18 - plus extensions to existing lines 11 and 14.

A greener future

For many living in the city, the new routes can’t come quickly enough.

“I love living in Versailles but sometimes it’s just a lot,” said Lauren Bain, 26, a journalist working in Paris but living in the city of Versailles, roughly 20 kilometers southwest of the capital.

Bain says she attends church in the neighboring town of Saint Aubin, ostensibly a 20-minute drive away, but two hours by bus, which is how she currently makes the journey. It can take even longer; she was stuck on a bus half-submerged in water during heavy rainfall.

She commutes to work in the center of Paris via the RER C line, which she has little love for despite the convenience of a station in Versailles.

Once the new Grand Paris Express line 18 opens, connecting Versailles directly to Saint Aubin, as well as Paris Orly Airport, the city’s second-busiest, her options are set to improve.

“Line 18 cannot open sooner,” Bain said.

Mohamed Mezghani, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, based in Brussels, says the new lines puts Paris at the forefront of city public transport networks – alongside Tokyo, Moscow and Washington D.C., looking to reduce environmental impact through suburban interconnectivity.

“The Grand Paris Express, with its circular lines, encourages movement from suburb to suburb,” Mezghani said.

“People in big cities are realizing that cars are not a solution, congestion keeps worsening and building more roads will only attract more traffic.

“We need this updated version of public transportation.”

“That thing is terrible,” she said. “I arrive late at work all the time! Just earlier this week, my train was canceled for no reason.”

The Olympic finish line

One big question for many Parisians – and for visitors to the city – is whether the new network will be operational in time for the 2024 Olympic Games, which will mostly be staged around the French capital.

This was the original plan when the project was announced by then President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, long before the city won its Olympic bid. But numerous delays have stretched the timeline.

A full opening of line 14 by now, plus partial opening of lines 15, 16, 17 and 18, which together connect to both Paris international airports, had been promised by Sarkozy and his successor François Hollande.

However, the project has been hit by various setbacks during the years, including construction site floods, delays in equipment delivery, and perhaps most crucial of all, the Covid pandemic.

And eight months before the 2024 Olympic Games, only the extension of line 14 to Orly Airport is expected to open in time. The other lines will gradually come on line starting in late 2025, according to the project’s official website.

France’s Transport Ministry remains upbeat about the impact the new rail lines will have on Paris, insisting that network capacity will be increased by 15% in time for the Games, which are forecast to attract millions of visitors to the city, already a popular summer destination.

“Our action plan is clear, and we’re on schedule,” it told CNN.

Even behind schedule, the new lines are likely to enhance the French capital’s appeal.

As writer Ernest Hemingway once remarked: “There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.” And once the new Grand Express lines open, hopefully the distance between them will shrink a little further.

By Xiaofei Xu, CNN

Paris Olympics Sets $26, Lowest Rate For 1 Million Tickets

One million tickets for the 2024 Paris Olympics will be sold for 24 euros ($26.50) each with availability for all 32 sports, organizers have said.

The Paris proposal to the IOC sets the basic price lower than at the 2012 London Olympics, where the 20 pounds tickets cost more than $31 at the exchange rate then.

"This is something important for us," Paris organizing committee president Tony Estanguet said. "This is a very strong promise to offer accessibility of everyone to Olympic sports." A centralized global sales program unveiled by Paris Olympics organizers calls for pricing nearly half of the 10 million total tickets at no more than 50 euros ($55).

For the 2024 Paralympics, prices start at 15 euros ($15.60) and about half of the 3.4 million tickets will cost no more than 25 euros ($27.50).

Paris aims to raise 1.1 billion euros ($1.22 billion) in revenue — about 30% of its budget — from ticket sales, Estanguet said.

Hitting that target would lift ticket income for Paris above the $1 billion raised by London from more than eight million tickets sold.

Tokyo organizers aimed for $800 million from ticket sales before the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fans attending nearly all of the events at the Games postponed to last year.

Fans wanting to secure tickets for Paris events can start toward the end of this year in a process overhauled to include buyers worldwide. Previously, tickets were sold in the host country and a network of agents worldwide handled sales elsewhere.

Estanguet said the new system should "limit the frustration" of people who previously specified their preferred tickets with no guarantee of getting them.

Instead, a two-month registration period will let prospective buyers sign up for a lottery that will allocate the winners a time slot next February of several hours to choose the tickets they want for multiple sports sessions.

"We can then guarantee that if you buy those tickets you will receive them," Estanguet said.

Single tickets for events will go on sale in May 2023, and a third sales phase will start toward the end of next year.

Estanguet said a new ticketing portal managed by French companies would also offer a resale platform.

Asked if discussions were held about limiting portal access for residents of Russia and Belarus, because of the invasion of Ukraine, Estanguet said no decision was needed for several months.