...Despite political protests, railway sabotage, gender furore and Russian fake news, Paris 2024 has played out peacefully.
It was on Marseille’s Corniche John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the coastal road that slings around France’s second city, that Gérald Darmanin metaphorically staged his own medal ceremony. A peculiar choice of location for this particular moment of national back-slapping given the Kennedy history, but France’s interior minister could be excused for getting a little giddy.
“It all started here, with the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille,” Darmanin told a lineup of gendarmes. “It’s a beautiful gold medal for the security forces.”
This was going to be the Conflict Games, staged at a time of unnerving global insecurity, with Russia said to be out to disrupt it having been prohibited from involvement, along with Belarus, as a result of...
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Author: Daniel Boffey