Paris Olympics is not just sport: it is about presenting a new French identity to the world | Philippe Auclair

Let’s face it, it was a failure. The rain, as if unleashed by a vengeful Olympian god upset at seeing what had become of the original Games, failed to derail the extravaganza devised by Thomas Jolly, as Poseidon’s storms had failed to prevent Odysseus from reaching Ithaca. The saboteurs who paralysed most of France’s TGV system on the eve of the opening ceremony failed too. One way or another, hundreds of thousands of drenched onlookers found a way to line the banks of the Seine to salute athletes and artists alike. And so did the rightwingers who had choked in their café crème when they’d heard that French-Malian Aya Nakamura was to perform on the big night, which she did, horror of horrors, with the Republican Guard in full parade garb, closing her skit with a Charles Aznavour song.

Argentina had done even better. France’s new sporting villains, since Chelsea footballer Enzo Fernández posted a video of the Copa América winners singing racist and homophobic chants aimed at Les Bleus in the Argentinian dressing room, managed to fail even before the Olympic cauldron had been set alight by Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec. What’s more, they were sent packing from the sevens tournament by Antoine Dupont’s team, in the Stade de France – and while Argentina’s populist leader Javier Milei was the awkward guest of president Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace. It couldn’t have been worse; yet, somehow, it couldn’t have been better. “WE DID IT!”, exclaimed a jubilant Macron on his X account.

But should Macron have used the past tense? A couple of days into these Games, their message appears to be more of a statement of defiance – “we WILL do it” – rather than one of relief or satisfaction at having won a crazy – and expensive – gamble, at least for now. Much of the outside world sees France as a fractured, some even said “ungovernable” country, which only escaped the prospect of the far right in power to find itself with a government placed in suspended animation until the Games are over, when Macron will finally pick a new prime minister. Yet this “ungovernable” country was able to put on a show which, whether you find it sublime or grotesque, very few other nations would have had the temerity to stage in such a fashion. If it is a mess, it is a glorious one. And should Macron wish to find a new prime minister who could federate all of France, he could do worse than choose Dupont, a piece of advice which flooded the message board of the very serious Le Monde newspaper in the minutes which followed France’s victory over Fiji in the rugby sevens.

Not everything has worked as well as was hoped for. The unseasonal, unsettled weather which affected the opening ceremony and tested the cyclists to the limits in the men’s time trial on Saturday is set to continue over the next week, with temperatures of up to 35C hitting the capital on Tuesday, followed by two days of storms and heavy showers. Despite a haul of four medals on the opening day, including the rugby men’s magnificent gold in the sevens, there have also been disappointments. Both judoka Luka Mkheidze – a refugee who fled his native Georgia because of the second North Ossetia war and didn’t speak a word of French when he arrived in Le Havre, aged 12 – and fencer Auriane Mallo-Breton were tantalisingly close to an Olympic title but had to content themselves with silver. Mkheidze was a victim of his generosity in the closing minute of his fight against Kazakh Yeldos Smetov, Mallo-Breton of her nerves as, having raced to a commanding lead in the épée final, she allowed world No 1 Man Wai Vivian Kong to prevail 13-12. The French handballers, along with the US basketball team the most dominant collective sporting force of the 21st century (gold in Beijing, London and Tokyo, silver in Rio), started the defence of their title with a concerning defeat by their arch-rivals Denmark.

Yet, with every passing day, every reminder of the beauty of Paris and of the venues which welcome the athletes, and every medal that came and will come the way of France, whom sports statisticians believe has a chance to finish in the top three in the medal table, something which hasn’t happened since London 1948, the more embittered and tin-eared the almost exclusively right and far-right politicians and opinion-makers who derided the “woke carnival” of the opening ceremony appear to be; even to those who found the spectacle an over-long dog’s breakfast of a show. At the other end of the political spectrum, the communist daily L’Humanité, which has reported extensively on the financial and human cost of these Olympics, was bowled over by an “unforgettable” first night. No wonder president Macron, in attendance at the Stade de France for the rugby, has the perma-smile of a cat who’s been given the keys to the creamery.

“Even if France is never in agreement on anything, in the moments that count, we know how to come together,” Paris bid leader and three-time Olympic champion Tony Estanguet said. That, at least, is what we French like to tell ourselves, forgetting to mention that the 1790 Fête de la Fédération was quickly followed by Robespierre’s Terreur. That, at least, is what we hope these Olympics can represent for a nation whose main problem sometimes appears to be that it believes it has a problem. It never was all about sport. Paris 2024 is about the reinvention of France’s capital city and its banlieue, a colossal project which the French administration hopes will rival what Baron Haussmann did with Paris intra-muros in the 19th century, and for which the magnificent athlete’s village in Saint-Denis is to be a template. Paris 2024 is about presenting to the world a supposedly new French identity which is not ashamed of success, but aims to achieve it based on values of sustainability, diversity and inclusion, the 21st-century equivalents of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Of course it is manipulative. Of course it is propaganda. But it is working so far.