David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and I'm joined by Louisa Thomas who writes our column, The Sporting Scene. Louisa, I am so glad, so relieved to be talking to you. We've been talking about nothing but politics for so long.

Louisa Thomas: Oh, yes. We'll be talking about the Olympics in which politics have never been involved.

David Remnick: The despair of it. The Summer Olympics, however, are here. They're starting in Paris this week but not every event will be held in a stadium or a sports complex. You've got three unexpected venues where different events will be held. What's the first?

Louisa Thomas: The first is a river, as it happens, the Seine. In fact, this is the site, not only of a couple of events, including the marathon swim and the triathlon, but also the opening ceremonies. It's a three-mile course down the river, [crosstalk] athletes will be traveling on barges as part of the Olympic parade. They'll pass the Louvre, the Notre Dame, what could go wrong?

David Remnick: Such show-offs [laughs].

Louisa Thomas: They actually had this idea after the 2018 Youth Games, there was a festival in the streets for this Youth Games opening ceremony. They thought, "Well, why don't we do that?" They'd actually really tried to reimagine the Olympics because the Olympics had become so overwhelmingly expensive. Paris decided that it was going to do something "sustainable". It is still incredibly expensive.

It's the sixth most expensive Olympics ever and will cost billions of dollars, but a lot of the stadiums that they're building are temporary in an effort to cut down costs, and they're really trying to be creative about it. They thought, what better way to showcase the city than a romantic cruise down the Seine?

David Remnick: Well, wait a minute. You're telling me that swimming events are going to be in the Seine or the marathon swim is going to be in the Seine and the triathlon. I've been around the Seine. I'm not sure I'd want to dive into that water.

Louisa Thomas: What you're saying is it's actually really a sewer. Is that what you're saying?

David Remnick: Something like that.

[laughter]

Louisa Thomas: You are absolutely correct actually. It has been illegal to swim in the Seine for a century because it is a cesspool, but they have spent $1.5 billion on treatment plant renovations and also building a giant holding tank near the Austerlitz train station. It's the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools. The idea is that-- the real problem of the Seine is actually not people dumping their crap into the Seine, although there's a lot of that. The real problem is that when it rains, this antiquated sewer system overflows and this untreated sewage mixed in the pipes just flows right into the river. They have tried--

David Remnick: I know when I'm diving in a river, and I'm going to be in there for a while for a triathlon or marathon swim, the phrase that I want to be having resonate in my mind is untreated sewer.

Louisa Thomas: Well, let me say first of all, open water swimmers have swum in some pretty gnarly circumstances. This will not be their first time that they've swam in less than pristine waters. However, yes, this is bad. Levels of bacteria routinely top what is considered safe for swimming. Even after this tremendous effort, in the case of storms, really big rains will still overflow it, and in several readings in June--

David Remnick: Oh man. Let's just say it's a good thing I didn't qualify this time around.

Louisa Thomas: The mayor of Paris actually promised that she would have swam in the Seine as a guarantee of how clean it was, and they kept pushing back the date. Finally, last week, she jumped in and very briefly said it was wonderful.

David Remnick: She did.

Louisa Thomas: A little bit cold. She did.

David Remnick: Did she come down with anything afterward? [laughs]

Louisa Thomas: She's still alive. The President, Macron, has said that he will do it but not before the Olympics. He's going to let the swimmers be the guinea pigs. If things get really bad, they will cancel the swimming portion or one option is to cancel the swimming portion of the triathlon to make it a duathlon and to move the marathon swim to where the kayakers and canoers do their thing. The hope is that they will be able to swim and that once the Olympics leave next summer, they're going to have swimming pools in the Seine where hot Parisians are going to be able to cool off among the, well--

David Remnick: Hot Parisians cooling off. You got the headline now. Now, venue number two as the cool venue of this year's Olympics is--?

Louisa Thomas: The number two cool event is the Place de la Concorde. The famous place where people get their heads chopped off during the French Revolution.

David Remnick: [laughs] Instead of decapitations, we're going to see what on the Place de la Concorde?

Louisa Thomas: This is the Youth Games. The Olympics has been making this tremendous effort in the past few decades to try and attract young eyeballs or rather probably television under immense pressure as ratings continue to decline, to reach an expanded viewership. They are doing that with sports like three-on-three basketball, skateboarding, and then the only new event at this Paris Olympics, which is breaking, which grows out of hip hop and the 1970s in the Bronx. It's basically these-- they're called B-Boys and B-Girls are going to square off and have a little competition.

The DJ picks the music. They have to respond to it. There are judges. They all have names like the US is represented by B-Boy Victor who is actually the world champion and other prominent breakers are Shigekix, B-Boy Phil Wizard, B-Boy Danny Dan, B-Girl Ami. I think this is going to be actually huge. There's a lot of interest in breaking.

David Remnick: Are there any countries that are particularly good at breakdancing as a sport, besides the United States?

Louisa Thomas: Well, the United States of America is where this was born. People are [unintelligible 00:05:47] .

David Remnick: Indeed. We dominate.

Louisa Thomas: Actually, B-Girl Sunny, she's a former exec I think. I don't want to say she's an exec but she's a former high-ranking person at Estée Lauder. She quit her job to focus on breaking. I think Japan is quite good. There's a pretty big breaking scene in Europe as well.

David Remnick: We're calling it breaking now and not breakdancing, but you want to say breakdancing?

Louisa Thomas: Breakdancing is actually somewhat pejorative. I actually cannot tell you why but they don't like it to be called breakdancing. Breaking--

David Remnick: All right. Then I never said it.

Louisa Thomas: Breaking refers to the breaks in the music is something I did not-- I thought it was like your body will break when you assume these positions as you dive on to hard floors, but it's actually like the breaks in the music for the beats.

David Remnick: I think it could be both.

[MUSIC - Kurtis Blow: The Breaks]

What other venue sticks out at the Paris Olympics?

Louisa Thomas: We're going to travel very, very far, thousands of miles to French Polynesia to Teahupo'o in Tahiti, which is the site of an iconic break, which is where the surfing is going to be taking place, which is one of these other events that have been added to attract the cool kids.

David Remnick: We have surfing and Bill Finnegan, our great surfing correspondent will definitely approve, but they have to go how many thousands of miles away?

Louisa Thomas: Well, it's somewhat controversial I've got to say. This is a village that apparently has a snack bar. That's the restaurant. This is a hidden gem and now the world is going to be descending on this tiny fishing village that some people are, you might imagine, somewhat concerned about what it's going to do to this small city. They're saying all the structures will be temporary except for this three-storey aluminum tower, which is drilled into the coral, which is very fragile.

David Remnick: That can't be good.

Louisa Thomas: No, can't be good.

David Remnick: Now, a little tender question. How have people reacted to this venue being used given the stark reminder of French colonialism?

Louisa Thomas: This is actually-- I was looking for more of an outcry than I found. This is considered one of surfing's iconic sites. I think there wasn't a lot of surprise when they chose and there's a lot of pride over this. Yes, it's a reminder of frankly the Olympics checkered history itself. This is a 19th-century antiquated project. I think most of the concern has been less anti-colonial and more of it has been environmental, and also threat to the way of life. That's where a lot of the focus of the protest has been. Not so much, why is France presuming to "own" this place thousands of miles away but why are they going to degrade this very special fragile place, because they're going to have a competition?

David Remnick: Against that stark political background, what surfers should we look out for when we tune into the surfing competition?

Louisa Thomas: Some of the favorites in the event are John John Florence from the US and Gabe Medina on the men's side, a Brazilian. On the women's side, we have actually a local favorite known as the Queen of Teahupo'o, Vahine Fierro. She's 24 years old. She's goofy-footed. Bill Finnegan can tell you what that means. It means that she leads with her right foot, which is particularly important on this wave because it creates such a terrifying huge barrel. It helps her get a lot of speed facing the wave instead of having her back to it.

David Remnick: Our longtime listeners will know that I went surfing On the Radio with Bill Finnegan. We went out to Far Rockaway.

Louisa Thomas: You mean you went surfing on the radio waves as we are now?

[laughter]

David Remnick: No. Let me just say, the most difficult physical aspect of the kind of surfing I did was getting into the wetsuit about which I will not go on about. It was a semi-catastrophe, I hope, put it that way.

Louisa Thomas: Why am I not surprised? [laughs]

David Remnick: Louisa, what are you actually looking forward to seeing in the Olympics? What's the big sport for you?

Louisa Thomas: I'm like a normal person. I like the gymnastics.

David Remnick: Gymnastics, oops.

Louisa Thomas: I like the swimming. I want to see Katie Ledecky swim seven laps ahead of everyone else with a cup of chocolate milk that balance the top of her head. Let's not forget track and field which is basically the-- I will cry at least once when someone does something amazing because I am moved by the Olympic spirit and really fast charismatic people.

David Remnick: Louisa Thomas, thanks so much.

Louisa Thomas: Thank you.

[music]

David Remnick: Louisa Thomas is writing about the Olympic Games at newyorker.com, and you can be sure I'll be following the basketball, especially men's and women's, very, very closely.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.