Every four years, the Summer Olympic Games celebrate the Olympic values of excellence, respect and friendship. Athletes from all over the world come together for competitions that promote tolerance, openness and respect for others. I’ve always been a keen spectator of the Games, because I love sport and the magic it conveys, and also because I admire the athletes’ ability to surpass themselves, the beautiful stories that accompany some of their destinies, and the celebration of the universal.

This year, the Paris 2024 Organising Committee has pulled off a great feat, worthy of the greatest festive moments in history.  The decision by the organisers to break with the tradition of stadium festivities was a stroke of genius. The Seine, whose beauty and silent course are among the treasures of Paris, provided the backdrop for an enchanting spectacle. Paris 2024 will go down in history as evidenced by the reviews in the international press, which were full of praise for such a fine organisation.

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As a close follower of major sporting events and the festive celebrations that punctuate them, I have rarely seen anything as beautiful as the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games.

The Games are a great sporting occasion, but for a few weeks they are also a showcase for what a country has to offer the world. We take advantage of this window to showcase culture, history and heritage. In this respect, it’s worth pointing out that Paris has a lot going for it. It is undoubtedly competing with a number of other cities, including Rome and Saint-Louis in Senegal, for the title of most beautiful city in the world. It’s a shame that the latter is so poorly run…

Paris was a magnificent setting for the opening ceremony. France has a long and rich history, made up of both good times and bad. Thomas Jolly, the show’s director, and his teams were right not to censor themselves and to show their country’s history in all its complexity. Moreover, no country can boast of a spotless history, but it takes courage and a great sense of honesty not to give in to the historical rewriting that hides one part in order to highlight another.

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As Ricoeur said, ‘Symbols make you think’. The Games are being organised at a time when France is going through a regime crisis, with confusion resulting from legislative elections that have made a nationalist party with racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic roots the leading political formation in the country in terms of votes and members of parliament. It is in a fractured country where attacks on the dignity of black, Arab and Muslim people are a daily occurrence that the values of openness and tolerance advocated by Olympism are being celebrated at this time.

I have always been convinced that in times of darkness and doubt, culture and sport are the right responses to closed minds and rejection of others. The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, with its celebration of cross-fertilisation and progressivism, was an intelligent and refined response to the morbid fantasies of a closed, old-fashioned and stunted country; a country that some would have stoop to the systematic sorting of men and women according to their origin, colour or religion.

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I was touched by the sublime performance of our compatriot Guillaume Diop, the first black man to achieve the status of principal dancer at the Paris Opera. Aya Nakamura’s performance, coming out of the French Academy surrounded by the Republican Guard, also has a special symbolic meaning, given that this talented woman has been subjected to racist insults for years. The choice of two non-white people, Marie-José Pérec and Teddy Riner, to light the Olympic flame was the highlight of a spectacle that enraged racists and identarian nationalists who were supporters of a white, Christian France that has now rightly disappeared.

The ceremony was a monumental slap in the face to all the racists, entrenched in their own stupidity, who always see the other through the prism of sectarianism. I couldn’t help thinking about the Senegalese Olympic Committee’s decision to appoint French-born Senegalese Jeanne Boutbien as Senegal’s flag-bearer in Tokyo. On social networks and in certain media, the silly words of sectarianism and exclusivity were rustling around. Those who vulgarly called her a toubab to delegitimise her still refuse to accept that Senegal is a country whose vocation is to mix. The men and women who scorned Miss Boutbien here are the counterparts of those over there who exclude Aya Nakamura and deny her existence. They are militants of foolishness and constant ignorance.

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While Senegalese athletes such as Oumy Diop, Yves Bourhis and their comrades are honouring the national flag in Paris with their passion and talent, the din of the pseudo-panafricanists, the anti-France, the real complexes, is bothering us. Their complaints, their calls to do battle with France, are more akin to neurosis. They lock themselves in a colonial straitjacket, refusing to think outside the prism of opposition to France, even though the world is vast and the opportunities numerous.  To make matters worse, the village madman got involved. Presumably unfamiliar with history books, if at all, he invited himself to…Thiaroye. Fortunately, between fencing, swimming and basketball, our eyes and ears are occupied with things far more worthy of interest…

Post-scriptum: This concludes the fourth season of ‘Traverses’. The column is due to return in September, barring any changes.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH / Serigne S. DIAGNE