Paris 2024 Games excelled in synchronicity

By David Mullen

Now that the reviews are in, the 2024 Paris Olympics Games are being called the best Summer Olympics ever. There was a synchronicity to these games that had never been captured before.

Paris had little trouble maintaining its reputation as the world’s most beautiful city. Outside of some late July showers that dampened the spectacle of the Opening Ceremonies, the weather in France was ideal. This meant that intense heat and humidity would not influence the competition, and blue skies would serve as a backdrop for stunning city views.

Olympic organizers were wise to make the Eiffel Tower the centerpiece of the Olympics broadcast coverage. It served as the pillar of strength overlooking the 2024 Games in a way that no distinguished landmark can.

Fortunately, in the live and taped television era of the Games, these Olympics were without newsworthy distractions channeling the focus from the athletes’ efforts. Mexico City in 1968 had a political firestorm; the 1980 Munich Games were stunned by tragedy; Atlanta 1996 will be remembered for the bombing; Athens in 2004 proved ill prepared as hosts and the 2020, later 2021 Tokyo Games will always be connected to COVID-19.  

Coming off of the COVID-restricted Tokyo Games — where interest was stilted and performances were hampered by truncated qualifying and no crowd support — Paris looked like a party where only the world’s best athletes, with Snoop Dogg and Tom Cruise, were invited.   

This was by far the TV medium’s best presentation of the Olympic Games. Paris 2024 was the first Olympics broadcast across all available media platforms. All events were televised live for Olympic junkies. Prime time broadcasts were mainly highlight packages yet still presented with anticipation and drama. Live events drew record numbers.

When Team USA beat France for the gold medal in the men’s basketball tournament on August 10, it was the most watched basketball game in five years. An estimated 20.3 million people viewed the games on a Saturday afternoon. No non-NFL game has come close to those ratings. The game was watched by twice as many viewers as any Major League baseball game in 2023. 

NBC and its portfolio of networks often treated the games like entertainment rather than sports competition, which appeals to a much broader audience. Sometimes, the commentary sounded more like the Tournament of Roses parade than a technical lecture on why breakdancing was an Olympic sport, but it worked to create mass appeal. 

The world needed these games. Constantly bombarded by reports — many justified — that the world is so strife-torn that countries cannot coexist under one umbrella, the 2024 Paris Games supplanted politics with athletics for at least a few weeks. While countries theoretically competed against each other and the medal count was always visible, it is the individual performances that are remembered. 

The USA women’s gymnastics team won the gold medal. But it was Simone Biles that captivated the world’s heart. How can someone so petite be so powerful? Biles wrote on Threads that she hadn’t “found the right words to describe my Olympic experience, but it’s been a whirlwind … I’ll be forever grateful to represent the U.S.” Right answer. 

And remember, Biles rebounded from issues that made her experiences at the Tokyo Games three-years earlier mentally taxing. But the world roots for her. With all due respect to Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Tiger Woods and others, Biles, winner of three gold medals, secured her position as the most popular athlete on the planet.  

The USA women’s swimming team was spectacular. The 4×100 medley relay team won the gold with a remarkable world record time of 3:49:63, easily outdistancing a powerful Australian team. But it will be USA swimmer Katie Ledecky and France’s Leon Marchand who will be talked about for decades. 

The women’s 4×100 track and field relay team held on to beat Great Britain and Germany at the tape. But it was the individual track and field performances of Gabby Thomas, Dallas’ Sha’Carri Richardson and others that had the Olympic viewers’ attention. 

The Olympic Games transcend American professional sports. In the U.S., sports fans are force-fed by linear networks, ESPN, Fox Sports and talk radio to believe that all sports revolve around the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, LeBron James, Caitlin Clark and anything regarding the Travis Kelly and Taylor Smith relationship. Nothing else matters.

In the Olympics, today’s viewers were not force fed anything, except for Johnny Weir’s outlandish costumes and commentaries. We created our own heroes, often performing in sports we only see on TV every four years.

The Olympic flag was officially handed over to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whose city will host the 2028 Olympic Games. LA Games Chairman Casey Wasserman said, “We don’t have an Eiffel Tower — we do have a Hollywood sign.” 

People already are starting to doubt whether LA can live up to Paris as a Games site. 

Having attended the well-executed 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, I am more than confident that LA will again be a superb host. The Hollywood sign may not be the Eiffel Tower, but America and the world will be watching for the individual feats of excellence presented with an LA flair and, hopefully, the synchronicity of the Paris Games.