Its Time to Consider Whether the Paris Olympics Are Actually Cursed

In light of the increasingly farcical news coming out of Paris each day, I think it’s time we sat down and asked ourselves some serious questions—namely, are the Paris Olympics actually cursed? Maybe Dionysus didn’t like his portrayal in the opening ceremonies, maybe blue isn’t his color, I don’t know, but consider …

Satanic Panic: Part Who Knows Anymore

I loved the opening ceremonies. Loved. They featured revolutionary history, Greco-Roman mythology, and flagrant homosexuality, which are some of my favorite things and were, frankly, a visual delight.

However, some people are apparently incapable of looking at anything remotely fun and cool without imagining Satan in the middle of it so now we’re experiencing the direct-to-video sequel version of the Satanic panic live on Twitter. Not gonna lie though, and maybe this is just me being an overeducated liberal elite (because knowing easily googleable things is communist or something) but there is something intensely funny about them confusing Dionysus and Jesus, in a history repeating itself sort of way. Same goes for associating Marie Antoinette with the devil.

Still, being accused of using the Olympic opening for Satanic rituals by a good chunk of Christonationalist conspiracy theorists probably feels pretty cursed.

The French pole vaulter whose penis cost him the games

I kept trying to think of an appropriately funny pole or equipment pun here but in the end, what’s funnier than the truth?

Normally when we say someone’s penis cost them something we’re talking about getting caught thinking with it. But in this case, the poor, poor man’s genitals whacked into the cross-bar even as the rest of the body cleared it, knocking it down and costing him a spot in the final. Now, I have neither the relevant genitalia nor any experience pole vaulting but surely there’s some kind of supportive garment to prevent this from happening? Like a dance belt or something.

The Aquatics Center fiasco

My colleague Kate Hudson already provided some excellent coverage on this, including the tangential connection to Taylor Swift, so I’ll be brief.

Part of Paris’ bid to host this year’s Olympics included the promise of a brand new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art aquatics center. Unfortunately, the project ran out of money before it could be completed (perhaps coincidentally the Paris organizing committee is facing a corruption probe), leaving them with a venue unsuited for any of the swimming events. A rugby stadium was hastily converted for the purpose, but it too actually fails to meet the current Olympic standards as the pool is only 2.1 m rather than the minimum 2.5 m deep. Making it worse, this lack of depth may be why there have been no new swimming records this year as apparently deeper water allows you to move faster (physics!) and vice versa.

The Seine is full of shit (and e-coli!)

It’s not just the indoor swimming events that are cursed this year, the Triathlon almost had to become a Duathlon because of the high levels of e-coli bacteria and raw sewage in the river.

Thanks to unusually heavy rain this year the sewers have been overflowing into the river, flooding it with, well, all the things you typically find in sewers. It’s all very post-Brexit British beachcore over there but in the end, it was deemed safe enough for the swimming to go ahead, even if one of the competitors did end up vomiting ten times on the shoreline once he’d got out. He blamed it on heat and stress rather than water quality, though other athletes had a lot to say about the things they were swimming with.

Honestly, it’s giving Under Paris vibes, corrupt Olympic committee and all, only with the worst possible movie monster (a.k.a. human shit) instead of a rogue shark.

Everything about the Olympic Village

When it came to the Olympic Village, it really does seem like the team responsible for it looked at the problems Tokyo had and “went hold my beer.” From the reappearance of the terrible cardboard beds, lack of air conditioning, and full-blown food shortages (who could have guessed athletes need a lot of protein?!) it’s looking more and more like a certain kind of British comedy than something you’d expect from the world’s largest sporting event. The fact that the food they do have is apparently pretty bad is particularly embarrassing because imagine you’re France getting called out for terrible food on the world stage.

The plague of bed bugs

Nope nope, absolutely not, I would simply cancel my tickets and watch from home. Not only is Paris experiencing a plague of bed bugs but this is apparently an annual occurrence that gets worse every year? One in 10 Parisian households have had bed bugs since 2017? That is too many and the city officials are being way too calm about this whole situation. Maybe more funding directed to that instead of fancy surveillance equipment, yeah?

Now for something less funny

There have been some legitimately vile things happening at and around this year’s Olympics too of course. I’ve not included them on this list because making actual systemic issues and oppression part of a funny catalog of everything that’s gone wrong for the host country would be inappropriate and disrespectful, but let’s talk about some of them now.

As have other Olympic host countries before them, Paris embarked on a process of social cleansing in the run-up to the games, removing up to 12,500 marginalized people from their homes and displacing significant numbers of unhoused people before this year’s Olympics began.

The Olympic Games Law has enabled the French government to implement AI-driven surveillance across the city, something Amnesty International and other human rights groups have protested due to its negative impact on civil liberties. The French military has also been deployed as police (a famously democratic act that always ends well for the country in question) for the duration of the games. Host countries frequently use the Olympics as an excuse to pass legislation that tightens state control and threatens civil liberties and France is no exception.

Despite it being a breach of the Olympic charter, France has chosen to expand its decades-long campaign of marginalization and exclusion against hijabi women in the public sphere by banning its athletes from wearing the religious garment. The excuse is always that its about separation of church and state but preventing people from freely practicing their own religious faith in ways that don’t infringe or impose on other people isn’t actually a necessary part of that.

Not only has a convicted child rapist been allowed to compete but there’s been very little outcry about this coming from the “think of the children”/”protect women in sports” brigade. Instead, they’ve been too busy harassing the LGBT+ performers from the opening ceremony, (and yeah their ludicrous reaction to it is a lot less funny now in this context), and directing horrific vitriol toward Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting for not meeting their racist and transphobic standards of womanhood.

The failures and abuses of the games are just highlighting the ongoing work we all have to do, but hey, at this stage of 2024 what doesn’t?