Oxford university expert on the Olympics legacy
A week since the tournament in Paris ended an Oxford Brookes professor says hosting the Games is always a huge gamble.
A week on from the end of the Paris Olympics an Oxford expert says hosting the Games is always a huge gamble.
Dr Stuart Whigham, Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at Oxford Brookes University is looking at what the the legacy of the games in Paris might be.
The event in the French capital made history by hosting the first-ever opening ceremony outside a stadium.
Athletes arriving on boats along the River Seine as Lady Gaga and Celine Dion performed in the rain. The Paris Organising Committee prioritised sustainability, repurposing existing venues like the Stade de France and La Défense Arena.
Hosts also tried to be as sustainable as possible.
However, the Seine River, central to the Games, sparked controversy due to water quality issues, causing delays to the men’s triathlon event and media coverage of illness among athletes.
Dr Stuart Whigham, says this year's hosts learnt lessons from the past:
"I think that Paris 2024 has learned a number of lessons from past hosts such as London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016 who have harnessed the Games as an opportunity to ‘image brand’ the host city on a global platform.
Paris has similarly drawn upon its established status as a ‘global city’ within its strategic framing of the Games, not only through its elaborate opening ceremony which showcased a number of world-renowned landmarks (despite the torrential rain!), but also through the location of various events throughout the city."
He goes on to look at the economic value of hosting a major sporting event:
"In many ways, this strategy mimics the lessons from past Games about the opportunities to leverage the event for economic benefits through tourism and inward investment to the nation.
"It's a return to an established pattern which was disrupted for the previous Games in Tokyo due to impact of the Covid-19 pandemic for Japan’s hosting.
“In terms of the positives of the legacy, the Paris Organising Committee have strategically used the locations of the Games venues to showcase Paris’ numerous landmarks to a global audience - similar to the strategy used by London 2012 as part of their image branding and ‘soft power’ strategy. It is therefore possible to see some emergent benefits for Paris and France in terms of the economic legacy."