Who are the Olympics for?

For the first time since its first race in 1903, the Tour de France didn’t finish in Paris this year. The world’s best cyclists, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, were banished to the south coast after a gruelling three-week race, received by a small crowd as they struggled into the Place Masséna in Nice. Their achievements were purposefully overshadowed by Emmanuel Macron’s political folly: the largest opening ceremony in the history of the Olympic Games.

Macron has commandeered the Games as part of his unending mission to save France. He seeks political unity to ‘showcase the entire France’ at the Games but his left-wing opponents accuse him of hiding behind a concocted ‘Olympic truce’. Macron has insisted on the ceremony being larger than any before it. The political messages are usually inescapable: Beijing advertised its autocratic efficiency, London was a twee tribute to British liberalism, and Rio a carnival to distract from the government’s corruption scandal.