Commentary: Will French grouchiness snuff out the Olympics flame?

PARIS: French diver Alexis Jandard committed an Olympics -sized gaffe recently at the inauguration of the new aquatic centre built for the Paris summer games. He spectacularly wiped out during a synchronised dive - in front of President Emmanuel Macron and a crowd of thousands.

Many Parisians are planning to flee, darkly predicting that the capital will become an uninhabitable, crowded mess; the transport system will collapse under the influx of 16 million expected visitors; or a terror attack will hit the opening ceremony on the river Seine. Greek actress Mary Mina, playing the role of High Priestess, carries the flame during the Olympic Flame lighting ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics. Unfortunately, not everyone in France is as easy-going as Jandard. Instead, nearly every issue related to the Games is refracted through the prism of the cultural, racial and economic divisions that shoot through the country.

Another absurd debate followed - again stoked by the right and far-right - over whether the official poster for the Olympics, which depicts an imagined cartoon-style Paris, had tried to erase France’s Catholic past by scrubbing churches of their crosses. Public sector unions from rail workers to museum staff are threatening strikes - France’s true Olympics sport - to get compensation for working through their sacrosanct summer holidays. The terror alert level was again raised in March.

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