The photo of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, dressed in a diving suit and with swimming goggles on her head, swimming in the Seine nine days before the start of the Summer Olympics went around the world and will probably remain recorded as one of those iconic scenes by which an event is remembered.
Ms Hidalgo dived into the river near City Hall, her office and Notre Dame Cathedral, joined by Olympic Committee President Toni Estangen and Ile-de-France prefect Marc Guillaume.
"This is luck. We have dreamed about this for years, we have worked very, very hard, the water is very good, a little cold but not too much," she said, adding that the river is clean enough to host open swimming events during the 2024 Olympics and ceremonies. of the opening, "Parisien" reported. The mayor says that the Olympic Games were an engine and an accelerator, but also that the French must "adapt their cities to the climate and find a river".
Her move is part of a drive to show how the cleanliness of the Seine has improved ahead of the Summer Games, which begin on July 26, with a lavish open-air ceremony that includes a parade of athletes on boats on the Seine. Since 2015, organizers have invested heavily – as much as $1,5 billion – to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure a cleaner river for Parisians and visitors to the city in the years after the Games. The construction of a huge underground water storage basin in the center of Paris, the renovation of the sewage infrastructure and the upgrading of the waste water treatment plant were the most significant parts of that project.
THE SHADE IS CLEAN
Despite repeated promises by politicians to clean up the river, swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than a century. Jacques Chirac, the former president of France, made a similar promise in 1988 when he was mayor of Paris, but it was never fulfilled. Chirac, who was campaigning for a third term at the time, promised that year to clean up the river as part of his "Clean Sena" program. The future president of the Republic then counted on a period of five years to clean the river without thinking that it would actually take 36 years to implement it. Anne Hidalgo followed in the footsteps of the French Minister of Sports, Amelia Oudeau-Castere, who swam in this river in a diving suit a few days before her. The Senna will host several open water swimming events during the Games, including the Olympic marathon swim and the swimming stages of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.
By the time you read this text, I will already be in Paris, and in the report on the opening of the Summer Olympics in the next issue of "Vremena" you will have the opportunity to read about my experience swimming in the Seine, as I intend to follow the example of Mayor Hidalgo. Where I have swam all over the world, the waters of the Seine will certainly not be the biggest challenge.
As a media partner of the Olympic Committee of Serbia, I was in Beijing in 2008, London in 2021 and Rio in 2016. Like most other potential visitors, I skipped the Tokyo Games, which were held a year later than the scheduled date - 2021, due to the pandemic.
Photo: Ap photoCARTOONS FROM OLYMPIC LIFE: Angelina Topić;…
WHY PARIS
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games (Jeux olympiques d'été de 2024) whose official name is the "Games of the XXXIII Olympiad" (Jeux de la XXXIIIe Olympiade) will be held from July 26 to August 11, 2024 in Paris and some other cities of France . Having previously hosted in 1900 and 1924, Paris will become the second city to host the Summer Olympics three times, along with London (1908, 1948 and 2012). The 2024 Olympics also mark the centenary of the 1924 Olympics. France will host the games for the sixth time, counting both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Apart from Paris and its suburbs, certain sports competitions will be held elsewhere throughout France and its overseas territories. Handball and basketball competitions will be held in Lille, sailing in Marseille, surfing in Tahiti in French Polynesia, while the football tournament will be played across France.
photo: ap photo...Ivana Španović, Tokyo 2020;...
For the 2024 Summer Olympics, six cities were in the running: Paris, Hamburg, Boston, Budapest, Rome and Los Angeles. On July 27, 2015, Boston decided to withdraw its bid to host the Games. Hamburg withdrew its bid on 29 November 2015 after holding a referendum, and Rome withdrew on 21 September 2016 citing financial problems. Budapest withdrew on 22 February 2017 after 260.000 people signed a petition against the bid. At the 131st session of the IOC in Lima, on September 13, 2017, it was decided that the 2024 Summer Olympic Games will be hosted by Paris, and the 2028 Summer Olympic Games by Los Angeles.
During the Summer Olympics in Paris, there will be 329 events in 32 sports, including 28 "core" Olympic sports that were on the program in 2016 and 2020 and four optional sports proposed by the Paris Organizing Committee. Breakdancing will make its Olympic debut, while skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing will return to the Games program.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the IOC suspended the Olympic Committees of Russia and Belarus for violating the Olympic ceasefire. Russian and Belarusian athletes will instead compete as "individual neutral athletes" (AIN), without national identification. As individual athletes, they will not be considered as a delegation during the opening ceremony or in the medal table.
photo: ap photo…volleyball players, Tokyo 2020.
PEOPLE'S OLYMPIAD
Of course, this is not the first time that politics has mixed its fingers in the modern Olympics. My favorite story is the one about the "People's Olympiad" - The People's Olympiad in 1936 in Barcelona, where countries and athletes who wanted to boycott the "Hitler Olympics" in Berlin were supposed to participate. This event was the first attempted boycott in the history of the Fashion Olympics.
At its 1931 session in Barcelona, the IOC decided that Berlin, the prosperous and liberal capital of the Weimar Republic, would host the 1936 Olympic Games. Then Berlin defeated Barcelona, which was also a candidate, by a majority of 43 to 16. Later developments led to that Adolf Hitler's Nazis come to power in Germany in the meantime, and that Spain becomes a republic. The new Republican Government of Spain, supported by the Regional Government of Catalonia, has decided to organize the "People's Olympics". The idea was to make use of the hotels built for the International Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929 for the Olympic Village. The plan was for the games to take place between July 19 and 26, 1936 and end six days before the Berlin Olympics.
photo: TanjugBasketball national team of Serbia
6.000 athletes from 49 countries applied for the National Olympics - from the USA, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, French Algeria. There were also German and Italian teams made up of émigré athletes who opposed the repressive regimes in Berlin and Rome. Although Stalin's USSR had its own version of the Olympics called the "Spartakiade" and organized by Red Sport International, they agreed to participate in Barcelona as well. However, the day before the scheduled start of the People's Olympics in Barcelona, the Spanish Civil War began and it was never held. Many athletes who arrived in Barcelona stayed in Spain to fight on the side of the Republicans and against Franco.
In recent history, there have been total boycotts on six occasions, all of which were Summer Olympics. The first boycott took place at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. Then, due to the Suez crisis and the Israeli attack on Egypt, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Cambodia, Spain, Switzerland and China boycotted the Games. The 1964 Games in Tokyo were boycotted by North Korea, Indonesia and China.
Rhodesia was denied entry when the IOC withdrew its invitation to the LOI in 1972 following protests from other African countries. South Africa was not invited to the 1964 games, and the invitation to participate in 1968 was withdrawn when a number of teams threatened to withdraw. Apartheid South Africa was not allowed to return to the Olympics until the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Montreal 1976 was boycotted by 28 countries, mostly from Africa, because New Zealand, whose rugby team continued to play matches with South Africa, was allowed to participate. The Summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 were boycotted by a record number of 64 countries - from the USA, Canada and West Germany to China. The official reason was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Four years later, the Soviet leadership retaliated with the same measure, so the Games in Los Angeles in 1984 were boycotted by 14 communist countries that were members of the Warsaw Pact, as well as their allies around the world - from Cuba to Libya and Ethiopia to Vietnam and Laos. The only exceptions were SFRY and Ceausescu's Romania. At the Olympic Games that followed, there was politicization and "diplomatic boycotts", but never as massive as it was during the Cold War. Russia's absence from Paris 2024 will be the first time in 40 years that such a large country and a permanent member of the UN Security Council has been excluded from the Summer Olympics, which speaks volumes for where the world is 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
photo: TanjugPresident Vučić and volleyball player Maja Ognjenović
SERBIA FIRST IN THE WORLD
Athletes from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and other countries from the region will compete in 32 different sports. One of the sports that always attracts the most attention at the Olympic Games is basketball, especially the men's tournament where the Balkan countries will be represented by Serbia and Greece.
Serbia is in a group with the USA, South Sudan and Puerto Rico. On the way to their first participation in the Olympic Games after 16 years, the Greek basketball players defeated the teams of Slovenia and Croatia. The Greek team is in a very difficult group with Canada, Australia and Spain. One of the biggest surprises of the pre-Olympic qualifying basketball tournaments was the elimination of Lithuania, which was one of the hosts of the playoffs.
Of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia has the largest team - 112 Serbian national team members in various sports secured their way to Paris by achieving the Olympic quota. On the eve of the Games, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić organized a reception for all Serbian Olympians, presenting volleyball player Maja Ognjenović and water polo player Dušan Mandić with the national flag that they will carry at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. "We hope for a harvest of medals, but even if there are none, we will still love you," Vučić said on that occasion.
For each gold medal won at the Olympic Games, the state will pay 200.000 euros, he reminded and added that "a small number of countries in the world have decided to pay such large prizes". According to the data available so far, according to that decision, Serbia is in first place in the world (!), far and ahead of some much more developed countries and exactly five times more than Croatia, which increased the prize from the previous 27.650 euros on the eve of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. to 41.000 euros.
Serbia will be represented in Paris by the following Olympians: Zorana Arunović (shooting), Damir Mikec (shooting), Natalia Šadrina (boxing), Vakid Abasov (boxing), Ivana Španović (athletics), Milica Gardašević (athletics), Andrej Barna (swimming), Milica Novaković, Marija Dostanić, Anastazija Bajuk, Dunja Stanojev (kayak four), Marko Novaković, Marko Dragosavljević, Vladimir Torubarov, Angelo Džombeta (kayak four), men's basketball team, Angelina Topić (athletics), Jovana Arsić (rowing), Stevan Andrija Mićić (wrestling), Ali Arslan (wrestling), women's volleyball team, Mate Nemeš (wrestling), men's 3 on 3 team, Jelena Erić (cycling), Ognjen Ilić (cycling), Aleksandra Perišić (taekwondo), men's water polo team, Velimir Stjepanović, Andrej Barna, Nikola Aćin, Justin Tsvetkov (swimming relay), women's basketball team, Sara Ćirković (boxing), Aleksandar Komarov (wrestling), Lazar Kovačević (shooting), Georgi Tibilov (wrestling), Martin Macković, Nikolaj Pimenov (rowing double sculls), Nemanja Majdov (judo), Milica Nikolić (judo), Marica Perišić (judo), Aleksandar Kukolj (judo), Milica Žabić (judo), Strahinja Bunčić (judo), Adriana Vilagoš (athletics), Lev Korneev (taekwondo), Stefan Takov (taekwondo), Novak Djokovic (tennis), Dušan Lajović (tennis), Izabela Lupulescu (table tennis), men's volleyball team, Anja Crevar (swimming), Armin Sinančević (athletics) and Elzan Bibić (athletics) ).
Even a cursory look at these 112 names speaks of the multi-ethnicity of the Serbian Olympic team, which consists of a large number of athletes from Vojvodina and Sandžak, as well as several foreigners who have taken Serbian citizenship.
