The Olympics Is Almost Over. I Have Some Questions. (2024)

This is part of Slate’s 2024 Olympics coverage. Read more here. If you’re enjoying our coverage from Paris, join Slate Plus to support our work.

Why did Paris, a city whose international reputation could scarcely get any bigger, decide to host the Olympics in the first place? Was it because, as Le Monde wrote, “Paris deserves to organize the Olympics”? Will the Paris Olympics, with their few permanent developments, all in the service of the public interest, redeem the competition’s model? Or is it a one-off?

What are the post-Olympic metrics to judge the event’s success for the region, or the country? They’re not really going to keep those rings on the Eiffel Tower, are they?

What was the look on Emmanuel Macron’s face when he learned the reconstruction of Notre Dame would not be finished, as initially planned, to coincide with the beginning of the Games?

In a world with no Olympics, does the region’s highly ambitious mass transit expansion get finished sooner or later than in the present timeline? What if mass transit service could be as good all year as it has been these past two weeks? What have been the ridership effects for locals of doubling single-ride ticket prices for the duration of the Games, instead of having transit be free, as was originally proposed?

Why was there an interminable ad for Louis Vuitton in the middle of the opening ceremony? Is the beloved Olympic balloon also an ad for the French electricity company EDF? Should sugar-and-plastic company Coca Cola really be a sponsor of the Olympics? Why couldn’t they install all those soda fountains, forcing concession workers to empty plastic bottles into plastic cups? Why didn’t organizers get some of the city’s amazing local restaurants and caterers to provide the concessions?

Are there any Olympic sports that are not either: ball into net, ball over net, dance, race, or fight? Is that what the five rings stand for? Is it a betrayal of France’s principles to enforce the IOC’s rules about Taiwanese patriotism, including the prohibition of the Taiwanese flag?

Is it fair to say “the Games pay for themselves,” as Emmanuel Macron has often done, when a handful of the sponsors are French public entities like the regional transit authority, the post office, and the investment arm of the French state? How does the total cost account for the attention of so many civil servants who might have been doing other things? What’s going to be the final bill for the policing? How about the security just for the opening ceremony? Could the police be this nice all the time? Was it worth it to make hundreds of thousands of people register for special QR codes to access their homes, offices, and appointments, just to have a parade? What is the future of the facial recognition video-surveillance authorized by the 2023 Olympic Law?

Was it necessary for the good image of Paris to “identify people on the street in sites near Olympic venues” and bus them out of town? What happened to those guys who sell Eiffel Tower trinkets? How about the sex workers in the Bois du Boulogne?

Is it cause for concern that the number of short-term rental apartments available in Paris rose by 76 percent this year, according to data provided to Slate by the analytics firm AirDNA? Does that damage the mayor’s efforts to keep Paris from turning into a museum city? What kind of long-term tourist bump do city leaders want to get out of the exposure, in a city that already struggles with overtourism?

Speaking of museums, are the visitors doing anything besides going to the Olympics? How much of Paris are they really seeing if attendance is down from last July by 20 to 30 percent in the Louvre, 29 percent in the Musée d’Orsay, and 31 percent in the Musée de l’Orangerie? Even though all the museums, from the Museum of Immigration to the Paris Mint, organized special Olympics exhibits?

What are they up to if they’re not going to museums or taking boats on the Seine, which reported customer declines of 40 to 50 percent? Even if there are more visitors to the city and region during the Games, as hotel, rental, and flight data suggest, does it make up for the drop before and after? Would tourists be contributing more to the regional economy if the Olympic tickets weren’t so expensive?

How do you measure the “crowding out” effect of the Games displacing activities that would otherwise have occurred? How much has the regional economy been put on pause by a general focus on the Olympics as well as specific measures like remote work, mandatory office vacations, and road closures? Do the contributions of 45,000 Olympic volunteers, many of whom do dull tasks like scanning tickets and directing traffic, constitute an exploitative practice? A violation of French labor law?

Could the permanent investments related to the Games have been more aligned with the needs of Seine Saint-Denis, the group of suburban towns north of Paris that is the youngest, poorest part of France? If this is the Greenest Games Ever, why was it necessary to designate a highway interchange in Saint-Denis as a project of national interest, overriding local opposition?

If the goal is to teach kids to swim, would many small community pools have been a better investment than two Olympic-grade facilities? Should more of the Olympic Village be dedicated to very low-income residents of the neighborhood? Is the construction and staffing of fan zones the best use of precious municipal dollars in Saint-Denis? Shouldn’t the Olympics pay for that? Did the Paris 2024 organizers do a good-enough job getting residents of Seine Saint-Denis to the Games? Is there something a little sinister about the constant insistence on “changing the image” of the area?

And what’s in those chocolate muffins, anyway?