It might be time to get existential. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which ended on Sunday night in a lavish closing ceremony, screamed chronicle of a stress foretold. But 16 medal-winning summer days and nights for French athletes brought a new vision of success, both at home and abroad.

Paris and its monumental treasures were the stars as local organisers had asserted during the prelude to the official start of the the Games on 26 July while dealing with the gripes.

Complaints about the €4.4bn cost, restricted access and road closures near the river Seine projected inflexibility and lack of dynamism from sections of a country whose calling card to the world was insouciance and an embrace of the unknown.

There was a glee extraordinaire to shuffle off the Olympic coil.

Voided of such lugubrious souls, the city was flooded with shiny, happy people who were around for Paris – one of the most beautiful places in the world – and for the Olympic Games. A double whammy of wonderfulness.

The city venues – part of the organisers’ sustainability drive – and the outliers in places such as Colombes to the west – became areas of outstanding sporting action and party central.

Dutch fans celebrating the gold medal of the men’s hockey team at Yves du Manoir Stadium annexed a couple of corner shops and bars near the train station to dance and drink the night away. It was not orange juice.

A Mexican couple celebrated their betrothal smiling in the sunshine at the women’s team archery on the Esplanade des Invalides.

The overwhelming reaction to the doomsayers? International equivalents of a Gallic shrug. If the Parisians and the French don’t get this, they need help.

And if they don’t, we’ll always have Paris.

Read more on RFI English

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