Oh, to be back in the heady days of 2017, when Paris won its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
It was in Lima, Peru, and there was Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, cheering hand in hand with Tony Estanguet, the thrice-medaled canoe champion from the Athletes’ Commission of the I.O.C., today the president of the Paris Games. Hidalgo made big predictions then, like how there would be solar captors on the streets and as yet uninvented high-tech athletic gear to turn the Games into energy producers.
Today, as the clock ticks down to the opening ceremony on July 26, even as an 82 percent completion rate of building construction has been announced, mostly on schedule, and with a carbon footprint projected to be half that of the previous Games’ average, the city is far from having caught Olympic fever. Instead, it’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Ahead of their annual contract talks, the General Confederation of Labor, France’s largest trade-union umbrella group, has threatened a transport strike during the Games. Panicky residents’ questions ring out in meetings in borough halls across town about how to navigate their own neighborhoods for those unlucky enough to live near one of the 38 Olympics venues. “I’m not going to lie to you,” said Geoffroy Boulard, mayor of the 17th Arrondissement, to a packed room in a recent meeting chronicled in Le Monde. “Your lives are going to be different.”
The one with the most to lose if it all goes south, Hidalgo has emerged as Paris 2024’s sourest Debbie Downer. The underminer in chief is making enemies across the board, especially among her constituents. Needless to say, there are no solar captors. In their place will be bedbugs, if last summer’s headline infestations are any indication.
Hidalgo is an ambitious politician, but for once she’s not acting like one. “There are some places where public transport won’t be ready,” she said offhandedly in late November on the chat show Quotidien, plucking the tensest of all strings for Parisians over a dossier that isn’t even her remit. (Transport is headed by Hidalgo’s arch-rival, Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region, of which Paris is the capital.)
Restaurateurs and hotel operators are now complaining that the “anxiety-making” headlines about a city unprepared for security risks will drive down tourism rather than increase it. Hidalgo’s sunny New Year’s promise to swim in the Seine before the Games notwithstanding, an Ifop–Le Figaro–Sud Radio study back in March 2023 already showed high “pessimism scores” on the part of Parisians worried about public transport and cost overruns—75 and 77 percent, respectively—which they know will fall on their own shoulders as taxpayers. They just saw their property taxes go up 53 percent in 2023, and they’re well aware that Paris operates under an $8 billion debt. That same study shows plummeting approval for Hidalgo as mayor. Folks are not in the mood.
“We’ve been suffering since the Games were declared,” grumbles Nico, a law professor who lives across the street from the Louvre with his wife, Marianne, the owner of a P.R. firm. “Permanent road works, shit everywhere, and obviously the hassle during the Games themselves.”
The city is far from having caught Olympic fever. Instead, it’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
People are worried about having to flash QR codes to return home at night, and to subject guests to having their papers checked, as has been suggested. Street traffic is already so congested that scooters ride the sidewalks, which is especially concerning to the elderly and parents of young children. The metros are late and packed to the rafters. Indeed, to Parisians, adding 15 million more potential riders this summer, at almost double the normal fare, is unthinkable. It’s enough to make you miss lockdown.
“COVID was heaven,” says Benjamin, a consultant for luxury and sporting organizations, who lives near the pedestrian neighborhood around the Rue Montorgueil. “Parisians were amongst our people again. We had space on café terraces. Now we’re all saying to ourselves, ‘Get the hell out.’” He mentions platforms (such as Hostnfly) that have sprung up to provide “concierge services” for homeowners looking to rent their places out for the duration. (For now, the average price for an apartment during the Games has ballooned from $350 a night to $1,000.)
Leaving town isn’t an option for everyone, which is why Valérie Pécresse suggested that every Paris resident who can work from home should do so. But Alexis, who works in finance development for tech startups, finds this “paradoxical.” He’s one of the few people I know with any enthusiasm for the Games, having actually managed to get a package of tickets for his wife and three kids that includes fencing at the Grand Palais. (Is there a more stylish event?)
And yet, he says, “if Parisians actually had the chance to vote for these Games, I don’t think they’d have passed. It’s so high stakes, and I don’t think we have the political talent to make them a success.”
Hidalgo’s lack of esprit de corps has certainly alienated potential allies. A half-hour late to a meeting with Estanguet and the Olympic Committee, two days after her Quotidien bomb, she continued her charm offensive. “Hello to those who haven’t attacked me,” she said. “No hello to those who have.” She left quickly, and then followed up at a press conference a few days later, wherein she said to the assembled: “You love polemics and to stir up whatever. I don’t give a crap.”
Macron’s minister of sport, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, told RTL radio: “She’s playing against her team, which is France’s team, and I find that really a shame. Now we’ll be stronger than that. If we have to deliver the Games without her, we’ll do them without her.” Added then minister of transport Clément Beaune, Hidalgo’s attitude is “a shame and a political betrayal.”
Hidalgo struggles to play elegant ball even in less contentious settings. At the inauguration of a new Olympics arena at the Porte de la Chappelle in the north of town two weeks ago, she urged locals not to leave town during the games. “That would be une connerie,” she said, using a word that makes vulgar reference to female anatomy and roughly translates to “bullshit.” She may need to catch up on her sleep.
There are a lot of big bets being made that have nothing to do with the mayor, but that will splash back onto her regardless. Estanguet swears there is “no Plan B” for the opening ceremony, currently scheduled to take place on barges on the Seine. It would be gorgeous; there would be glittering, self-promotional vistas of the Eiffel Tower and the Pont Alexandre III. It would achieve the “magic” that would make all the headaches worthwhile, as Estanguet told L’Équipe in early January.
And with 37 footbridges traversing the river, it would be both a logistical and security nightmare of almost unimaginable proportions. It would cut off one of the only citywide east-west axes left open to cars. Already the number of spectators has been halved from 600,000 to 300,000. Expect that number to reduce again. And then there’s the balcony issue.
Nico and Marianne are some of the lucky few who have a balcony with river views, but they can forget about inviting anyone over to squat them on the big night. Paris building authorities are considering going on a load-bearing enforcing spree, something they have rarely done in the past. Three people maximum for a balcony of our friends’ size. Laissez les bons temps rouler.
There may be less to see anyway, as the proposed swim competitions in the Seine are looking dodgy. Tests for E. coli and fecal matter taken last summer, the best time to approximate for the following year, failed repeatedly, which forced three different exhibition matches in August to cancel for the sake of the athletes’ health. And if more rain falls in 2024 than last year—already the case now in early spring—the toxic urban runoff into the river will be worse.
Even with construction on a new basin to capture it behind the Gare d’Austerlitz racing against the clock (yet another job-site pain in the ass), ask every fashion designer on the calendar how it goes when you bet on Paris weather.
Hidalgo’s future political ambitions are currently ambiguous. Her presidential dreams were quashed once before, in 2022, when she got less than 2 percent of the vote. Though multiple losses haven’t stopped French politicians from coming back time and again, it’s hard to make the case for the top job when your standing the last time was so bad, and your Socialist Party missed out on matching funds and is now in major financial trouble.
One assumes she will run again for Paris mayor, even if she is far less loved than she was when she was re-elected, in 2020. Rumored future opponents have new shine after Emmanuel Macron tapped Gabriel Attal to be his prime minister, which entailed a Cabinet reshuffle. Attal named the conservative Seventh Arrondissement mayor, Rachida Dati, Hidalgo’s most fearsome sparring partner in Paris City Council meetings, as minister of culture, a job which includes massive budgetary pot sweeteners to Paris-based film, television, and performing-arts industries. She was kicked out of the right-wing LR party when she accepted, and there are whispers that she joined Macron’s La République En Marche! party for a smoother path to city hall.
Attal himself has also been mentioned as a likely contender. If he ran in 2026, he’d be following the example of former prime minister turned Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, who went on to become one of the best loved presidents in French history.
The forces of la Macronie are lined up. Hidalgo better put on a good show when she takes that dip in the Seine.
If the mayor isn’t giving up, her constituents have. “Just go look at the map of works in Paris,” says Marianne, texting me a link to a page of the city of Paris’s Web site, which features a real-time tally of all the local construction. Hard to find a block inside the city borders without a dot.
Alexandra Marshall is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and a contributor to W, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Travel + Leisure. She chronicles her recent relocation to Le Perche in the newsletter An American Who Fled Paris