I had feared that the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris — and in Versailles, in Marseille, in Tahiti — would be, I don’t know, too French, or something, whatever that means.
And I like the French, mostly. As easy to stereotype as we are, but they are a great nation with a great culture. Perhaps I was just Olympics-indifferent because of the boring Tokyo games of four pandemic years ago.
Boy, was I wrong. Everyone was watching the Games. A truly great success. France was the perfect place to hold them. It gave us something to talk about that wasn’t to do with Kamala and Donald. From the operatic Opening Ceremonies on the Seine in the rain on through the two weeks of sports we know little about but suddenly find interesting when seeing peak athletes engaging in them, we were glued.
I am such a homer that I only want the Americans to win. Most of us are that way. But I was fascinated to see how much, in conversation, on social media, in the letters to the editor, other Yanks were able to root on various other underdogs.
When Julien Alfred of St. Lucia won Olympic gold in the 100-meter dash, the first medal ever for her country, I was all, Damn, the American girl didn’t win the race. Everyone else was like, How about that Julien Alfred! And like me, they couldn’t find St. Lucia on a map.
So I semi-joined in seeing the internationalist light, fascinated by Dutch runner Femke Bol, who kept coming from behind to win or medal, and passed three other runners — including our American — to win gold for the Dutch team in the 4 x 400 meter relay.
I don’t like it when the Chinese win, ‘cause cheaters, performance-drug style, and was happy that we won more medals than them, and at least tied them with 40 golds. I did like it very much when Taiwan, which can’t even call itself that — rather, Chinese Taipei — because of internationalist kowtowing to Beijing, beat the mainland in badminton for gold.
And how great was it that Russia — drug-shooting cheaters — was basically shunned from the Games, so we didn’t have to watch their juiced-up weightlifters get all pop-eyed.
I am very much looking forward to the 2028 Games right here in Southern California.
But about that symbolic handoff of the Oly flag from Paris to L.A. in the Closing Ceremonies:
I know that Tom Cruise saved the movies with his most recent “Top Gun.” He’s incredibly adept, for an elderly man, at rappelling down a stadium roof and jumping on a motorcycle. And then there he was, thanks to the, um, magic of movies, standing on the Hollywood sign.
And I’m as big a Billie Eilish fan as you’ll find; our girl from Highland Park should be the ‘28 flag bearer in the Coliseum. Red Hot Chili Peppers, great. Snoop Dog, OK. But we’re about more than the movies, more even than pop music. The camera that followed the skateboarder from what was at first Venice Beach with its barely seen Mark di Suvero sculpture should have focused on that public art for several seconds because we are a world-class city of art. The camera should have moved with the skater to the concrete pit at Dogtown, where the wild-child amateurs daily put on a show. Hollywood sign, fine, but zoom over to the Getty and the Broad, the Gamble House and the Rose Bowl, Watts Towers and the Huntington Library.
Think Teahupoʻo says surfing? Hold the SoCal contest at Trestles, with its deep Kem Nunn-novel vibe. Celebrate Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Walter Mosley, Los Lobos. Pappy and Harriet’s and Topanga Canyon, Malibu and Mt. Wilson. Paris is magnificent. And yet it’s got nothing on us. Done right, not just done Tinsel Town, L.A. style is going to wow the world.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
