The second weekend of the Paris Olympics, about halfway through the Games, was a good time to sit down and reflect on everything we had seen in peace and quiet. Or at least, it would have been a good time, but the men’s cross-country skiing was scheduled for Sunday, August 4, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and no one, frankly, wanted to miss it. HE. A new event never attempted before in the Olympics? Four rowers simultaneously carried through dangerous rapids and required by the rules to turn upside down under a horizontal bar and put their heads under water? Hell with the rumination.

The Olympics seeming to be in constant motion is both wonderful and frustrating. As you sit down in front of your TV to follow a favorite event, a little voice in your conscience whispers in your ear something you’ve never paid attention to before, but if was watching them now can be completely draining. On August 1, for example, the second run in the women’s BMX quarterfinals—guaranteed madness—started exactly four minutes before the women’s 120-pound boxing quarterfinals began. How do you choose between such rare pleasures? Perhaps, for economy’s sake, the organizers couldn’t combine the two disciplines, with the bikers squeezing each other’s lights out as they rounded a high corner?

Such problems were particularly evident on the opening Sunday, when table tennis, soccer, volleyball (beach and off) and hockey clashed, making the afternoon sessions in Paris impossible to plan. There was also archery, which was being contested for gold by the women’s teams, but you could skip the livestream and watch it later, confident that the Koreans would almost certainly win. They did. Finally, I put aside all other sports in favor of skateboarding—the women’s street final, or, as enthusiasts call it, Kids Falling on Concrete. The competitors, all teenagers, tried to slide sideways over the railing again and again, tumbling and falling over again. What set them apart as Olympians was their uncanny ability to find these falls funny. Poe Pinson, the great American hopeful, was laughing at the crowd before he started his run. Wearing a white T-shirt and no helmet to hold back his loose blond hair, not to mention protect his brain, he sped up, hurtled up a twisting wall, stumbled, fell over, fell flat on his back, and kept laughing. He eventually finished fifth, and the victory went to fourteen-year-old Coco Yoshizawa of Japan, but I think Pinson deserves his own medal for contributing to human joy. While you or I would have been hurt and dejected by the spectacle of public failure, he and his opponents glided through the crashes, certain that they would do their tricks next time. Dude, where’s my board? Oh man, get out! Party on!

Such joie de vivre was all the more satisfying because two days earlier any joy had been drowned. The opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday, July 26, took place in a flood so relentless that, for all we know, some of the equestrian teams might have considered unloading two horses to load them onto a ship. The sky wept as if in homage to an unnamed sorrow, and the expression on President Emmanuel Macron’s face was that of a man who wishes he could go to Tahiti, where the surfing competition is being held, to support his national team. The entire ceremony on the banks of the Seine was so full of low points that it was hard to pick a winner, but at the end, there was something that struck many observers as unbearably sad, as the man playing Ravel’s “Jeux d’Eau”—what else could it be?—out in the open, his grand piano hammering in the pouring rain. As for the scene in which unaccompanied children are lured by a masked stranger onto a boat in a rat-infested sewer, I still can’t get over it. quite a few Understanding how to deliver the “Welcome to France” message.

The next day, packed with fixtures, could it maintain its humidity level? Yes, it could. American cyclist Chloé Dygert, the world champion in women’s time trial, cruised sweetly through the streets at more than thirty miles per hour until she suddenly stopped. It wasn’t just a corner that caused her to lose her balance, but a wet, cobblestone corner to boot: old parismaliciously transformed into a menace. Imagine your tooth being knocked out in a soufflé. In fact, the prevailing low mood did not have to lift until evening. Rain or no rain, everything changed when the French took on Fiji in rugby sevens – a great sport that, if you haven’t tried it, requires nothing more than extreme speed, acute spatial awareness, precise ball-handling skills and the lung power of a Wagnerian baritone. France won its first gold medal. The players broke into a festive dance that seemed choreographed in advance. (That’s morale for you.) “My spirits are truly magnificent now,” said one of them, Jean-Pascal Barraque. The Games were coming alive, if only a little late. A good night’s sleep, a break in the clouds, and we could all say goodbye to the wet cartridge. The dry cartridge was ready to go.

The star of the French rugby-sevens team was Antoine Dupont, a twenty-seven-year-old who was burdened by two particular burdens. First, he was regularly praised as the best rugby player in the world. Second, he was one of the sporting idols who had been unofficially selected and expected to perform exceptionally at this year’s Olympics, and who was actually made to undertake the obligation. The miracle was that Dupont had fulfilled this duty.

This high-pressure hope practice is repeated at almost every Olympics. The host nation picks one or two of its most popular competitors and insists on putting them on a pedestal, whether they like it or not, long before the actual competition. So, in ridiculous hindsight, it seems like only a matter of fate that Carl Lewis would be awarded a gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Games (four medals in track and field and the long jump) or that Jessica Ennis (now known as Ennis-Hill) would win the women’s heptathlon at the 2012 Olympics in London. Ennis’s face was on posters and magazine covers weeks in advance; in the minds of a public that had drifted from optimism to madness, all she had to do was put on her spiked shoes, show off, and get the gong she deserved. What these things entailed and how much it might cost was rarely part of the conversation.

The most unusual Olympian in this regard may be Cathy Freeman, who was twice the dream carrier for Australia at the 2000 Sydney Games. She had to both crush her rivals in the four-hundred-metre dash and in the process become the first Indigenous Australian athlete to be crowned Olympic champion in an individual sport. Oh, and one more thing: the lighting of the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony depended on her. In short, Freeman had every right to say, “Sorry, this is too much” and step back. Instead, she did what was asked of her. I remember her vividly in the stadium, on the brink of the final, withdrawing into herself and blocking out the chaos of expectation. The hood of her green costume was pulled tightly around her head and remained there throughout the race. I have never seen a more determined person in sport or any other endeavor. Negative To exploit the surrounding air.

In Paris, the focal point was Léon Marchand, affectionately hailed by the French as Baguette. He was a charming young man of twenty-two, a junior at Arizona State. (What do people call him there? Super sub?) Marchand was armed with an easy smile and, as his movements in the pool at Paris’s La Défense Arena suggested, a working set of gills. If he was bothered by the sight of his own head (enlarged many times and held up high on a sign) bobbing around in the water as he moved, he didn’t show it. After a week of effort, he had a handsome bundle of four gold medals to his name. Here, it seemed, was the perfect local hero, modestly adjusted to his newborn immortality and, no less important, the technological trinkets that were being waved around in his wake. One innovation during these Games was the podium selfie: when the three medalists gather after the anthem, an aide hands a small smartphone to the bronze medalist, who gathers the other two behind him and takes a trio of triumphant smiles. Believe it or not, one wonders what happened at the Paris Olympics a century ago when art was part of the competition. Perhaps the bronze medalist was given an easel, a brush, and a palette full of paints and asked to do an oil sketch.

Marchand made waves in Paris, to be sure, but he also did something even more extraordinary. He caused a surge in sound waves. As is natural for any representative of the breaststroke, he dipped his head under the water at the same time as his kicks and then stood up to breathe. The crowd instinctively caught this rhythm and responded with appropriate enthusiasm. Soon we had a new routine that was both comical and hypnotic: every time Marchand surfaced and gasped for breath, stroke after stroke, the people roared.

While it is customary to celebrate the sights and sounds of any Olympic Games, 2024 may be the first occasion when the sounds move at the same pace as the images. It is fitting that the arena for this sensory reset is Paris. On YouTube, of course, you can summon the opening of “Love Me Tonight,” a Hollywood homage to Paris starring Maurice Chevalier. It dates from 1932 and revels in the fresh creative opportunities offered by a film soundtrack. As the city wakes, we hear the clatter of a road repairman’s sledgehammer, the snoring of a drunkard, the whir of a broom, the swish of a dusty carpet, and so on. Gradually, the everyday sounds begin to make beautiful music. And so, more than ninety years later, we hear a chorus of shouts for Marchand and a glorious cry of ecstasy, perhaps emitted by a god, reminiscent of the forest at sunrise. alsoTeddy Riner, a brilliant judoka whose status in the country borders on divinity, was a French TV commentator when he won his fourth Olympic gold medal. The screams were a new twist. By tradition, Riner’s fans greet his signature moves with a collective shout of “Teddy Bam Bam!”