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OLYMPICS

IOC agrees to award two Olympics at same time

The Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed on Tuesday to award the 2024 and 2028 Games at the same time, effectively guaranteeing that Paris and Los Angeles will be the hosts.

Published: 12 July 2017 08:47 CEST
IOC agrees to award two Olympics at same time
LA mayor Eric Garcetti, IOC president Thomas Bach and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo in Lausanne. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
The French capital is tipped to stage 2024 while the Californian city has hinted that it was prepared to wait four more years.
   
Paris and Los Angeles were the remaining candidates for the 2024 Olympics, a contest that IOC boss Thomas Bach said created “a golden opportunity”.
   
The Olympic movement has had increasing trouble attracting prospective hosts given the soaring costs and taxpayer support required.
   
Paris and Los Angeles mounted progressive, exemplary bids that would trim expenses by using existing facilities, the IOC said, making clear that it did not want to reject either candidate.
   
Bach lobbied for a double hosting plan, which won unanimous approval from IOC members at a meeting Tuesday in Lausanne.
   
The IOC boss called the decision “historic”.
   
“Ensuring stability of the Olympic Games for 11 years is really something extraordinary,” he told reporters shortly after the plan was approved.
 
Two month window 
 
The IOC now has a two-month window to negotiate with Paris and Los Angeles over which city will go first.
   
Bach said he wants a “tripartite agreement” before the IOC's main annual meeting in Peru's capital Lima on September 13th, when a vote on the 2024 host had been scheduled.
   
Immediately after the deal was approved, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and his Parisian counterpart Anne Hidalgo appeared on stage arm-in-arm to thank the IOC members, leaving little doubt that a three-way pact was achievable.
   
Speaking later alongside Bach, Garcetti and Hidalgo voiced full confidence in the upcoming talks.
   
“I now know that I am sitting up here with two mayors, from two cities that will host after Tokyo the next two Olympics,” Garcetti said, referring to the 2020 Games in Japan.
   
Hidalgo assured that “the Games will return to Paris”.
 
Paris 'ready', LA to wait? 
 
Bach said the negotiations would begin immediately, possibly over glasses of wine on Tuesday, adding an agreement could be announced next month.
   
In the highly unlikely event that there is no deal, the IOC will vote in Lima on 2024 alone, as initially planned, Bach said.
   
Delegations from the two cities — led by French President Emmanuel Macron and Garcetti — were in Lausanne making fresh pitches to IOC voters.
   
Paris has maintained a tougher line on the 2028 question, insisting it was focused on 2024, the centenary anniversary of the city's last Games.
 
   
“I am here to convey a message to say our people are ready to host these Games,” Macron told reporters on Tuesday.
   
“After three failed bids we don't want to lose a fourth one,” he said.
   
Paris mounted losing bids for the 1992, 2008 and 2012 Games.
   
The Los Angeles team has done did little to quell speculation it was open to 2028, with bid chairman Casey Wasserman reminding that the city had never given the IOC “an ultimatum” on the 2024 question.
   
The city last hosted the Games in 1984.
   
“Working hard to get the Olympics for the United States (L.A.). Stay tuned!” President Donald Trump said in a tweet, without making reference to a particular year.
 
'Great' Olympic cities 
 
The Olympic movement has been stained by Games that erected grand multi-million dollar facilities that were left to crumble and rot, while the billions spent in public money offered no long-term benefit to host communities.
   
Los Angeles has stressed its near entire reliance on private funding while vowing to use the Games to broaden access to sports, something it won praise for doing following the 1984 edition.
   
While Paris has equally focused on leaving a positive legacy, Macron also highlighted the opportunity for France to rally around the “Olympic values” of tolerance and inclusivity, saying they were embedded in the country's “DNA.”
   
“It truly is a tale of two great Olympic cities,” said a report released last week by the IOC's 2024 Evaluation Commission.
   
Bach called their presentations on Tuesday “mind-blowing.”

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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