On a special episode (first released on March 10, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast:

Paris plans to make history when it hosts the Summer Olympics this July – becoming the first city to take the Opening Ceremonies out of a stadium. Instead, a boat parade on the Seine will carry more than 10,000 athletes. But the Seine has been plagued with sewage and pollution for decades, and swimming has been banned there for more than 100 years. Will they be able to pull it off? USA TODAY Sports Reporter, Tom Schad, joins us on The Excerpt to discuss how France is preparing for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, March 10th, 2024.

Paris plans to make history when it hosts the Summer Olympics this July, becoming the first ever city to take the opening ceremonies out of a stadium. Instead, a boat parade on the Seine will carry more than 10,000 athletes, but the Seine has been plagued with sewage and pollution for decades, and swimming has been banned there for more than 100 years. Plus, how will they manage the security risks and what's going on with the menu? The stakes are high for the City of Light. Will they be able to pull it off? Our guest today is USA Today Sports reporter, Tom Schad. Thanks for being on the excerpt, Tom.

Tom Schad:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

It's an enormous undertaking to get the Seine clean enough for not only the opening ceremonies, but also for swimming events. Is it possible and how is the cleanup effort going so far?

Tom Schad:

Yeah, this is really kind of a focal point of the Paris Olympics. This is something that even when they were first proposing holding the Olympics here and bidding for the games, they wanted the Seine to kind of be the centerpiece. It's the centerpiece of the city. They want it to be the centerpiece of the games. It's a very audacious effort, I think is the best word for it to clean up this river that, as you noted, has been filthy and has had sewage runoff kind of dumped into it for more than a hundred years. Their plan is essentially to build, among other things, a giant kind of tank, a rainwater storage tank. Because what happens in Paris is the sewage system is so dated that sometimes when they have a really heavy rainstorm, the water kind of over floods the system, and then some of the runoff ends up in the Seine.

So their plan is to build this gigantic tank, and a tunnel system, can ultimately hold about 13.2 million gallons of runoff, and the idea is that they can tamp down on the pollution in the Seine now and then if there's a huge storm or something, all that runoff will flow into the tank as opposed to into the Seine. It's something that they've been working on for several years. It's in part still dependent upon storms, and they had a test event for, I believe it was the triathlon last year, which was going to be the first time that they were going to have athletes swim in the Seine, and there was a big storm just beforehand, and the water wasn't safe enough and they had to postpone the event. So there are definitely still some concerns about it, but in terms of progress and in terms of the plan, I mean, this is something that has been on the forefront of organizers minds for a while, and they definitely do have a good plan in place.

Dana Taylor:

Well, Paris must also ensure the opening ceremonies are secure. Without a stadium, will that mean fewer spectators? What's that going to look like this summer?

Tom Schad:

The opening ceremony is not, as you noted, going to be in a stadium. It's going to be athletes on barges floating 3.7 miles through the middle of Paris. There are lots of security concerns around any sort of opening ceremony. I mean, you got to control the airspace. You got to control egress, people coming in and out.

This is an even tougher challenge because you're going to have, as it currently stands, 300,000 spectators spread out among 3.7 miles. That's obviously a huge area on both sides of the river that authorities have to kind of be cognizant of. So they're enlisting, I think it's 30,000 or 35,000 security guards to work that, just for the opening ceremony. It's a huge undertaking just to make sure that you're having eyes and ears on such a large piece of land, and that's just the opening ceremony. The other thing is the Paris games are going to be very urbanized. It's going to be a lot of stuff in the heart of Paris, a lot of fans traveling on the subway system. I mean, it's a huge security undertaking for such a densely populated city. So there are just lots of layers to keep everybody safe.

Dana Taylor:

So Paris has seen its share of tragedy with regards to terrorist attacks. With almost 15,000 athletes competing and over half a million spectators at the venues, security for the games is going to be a top concern. I'm guessing they can't really say what the plan is to keep everyone safe, but what do we know about that?

Tom Schad:

Yeah, a couple of things that we do know. I mean, one is just the sheer number of police and private security and even French military that's going to be on the streets facilitating that effort. They want to have a lot of boots on the ground. Again, keeping eyes and ears on the different venues and just generally ensuring that downtown Paris is a safe place to be during the games. The other interesting thing that they're doing is using artificial intelligence, which obviously is very buzzy in this day and age and has been somewhat controversial.

Basically what they're trying to do is use AI to monitor a large number of security cameras and then flag to human operators when there's some suspicious activity going on. So there've been some concerns among political leaders in France that AI is essentially taking screen grabs of people on the street, kind of like a 1984 dystopian situation, and French authorities have cautioned that that's not what it is at all. It's using this technology to basically be able to keep eyes on a larger number of cameras than a human could, and then flag suspicious activity, like a sudden grouping of people or an unintended bag being left in a crowded space, things like that. So that's one of the things, you're right, we don't know everything that they have planned, but that is one novel thing that could be employed here this summer.

Dana Taylor:

What other risks does the city face with an event of this size, Tom?

Tom Schad:

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot, and we see this with every Olympic host. I think, again, what makes Paris a little bit more unique is that everything is so centrally located. I think with a lot of past Olympic Games, you've had large venues or large swaths of the games further outside the city. Maybe the opening ceremony is in downtown, but everything else is an hour outside. Here, you have a lot of the competition that's taking place in Paris, in Central Paris. Obviously one of the big things is that puts a huge strain on the transportation system, puts a huge strain on our other mode modes of travel, traffic, hotels. It's taking an already extremely dense and well-populated city and injecting a lot more chaos into it. It's a lot to wrap your arms around, but I think that the hope for French authorities and for games organizers is that yes, there might be some challenges, but the payoff is that you're going to have this truly urban games where the Olympics are woven into the fabric of Paris and it's going to make for a truly unique experience that way.

Dana Taylor:

Pairing for the Olympics and other events in the world stage can often catalyze public projects and host cities from cleanup projects to public transportation. What are some of the best examples of how residents in previous Olympic cities have benefited following the games?

Tom Schad:

One thing with regards to the Seine is that the French government has talked about basically maintaining the cleanliness of the Seine so that people can swim in it after the games, something that hasn't happened for a hundred years, perhaps opening small pools along the banks of the Seine so that it would be kind of a community gathering place, community pools. One example from the most recent summer games in Tokyo in 2021 was the Athlete's Village then after the games were apartments, and so now you have residents of Tokyo living in what used to be the Olympic village. With all that said, the long-term effects of the games and the impact is generally exaggerated, at least in the eyes of some experts. There's often a compelling case made on the front end for how it's going to rejuvenate or revitalize a city, and there's a lot of interest in it leading up to the games and then the games end, and it's like the circus has left town and everybody forgets about those things that were super important months later.

Dana Taylor:

The International Olympic Committee and their commission that's focused on sustainability, are we close to seeing an end to the construction of single-purpose Olympic venues that are abandoned and then fall into disrepair?

Tom Schad:

I think we're getting closer. Sure. There is still some of it. And again, the IOC has made this a priority. There have been past games even as recently as the Rio Olympics in 2016 where there were entire venues that were built and then totally abandoned within two or three years. That's just a bad look for the Olympics, for the IOC, and so they've really kind of tried to tamp down on instances like that. So Paris, for example, uses a lot of existing venues, arenas, and stadiums that have been around for decades. Some temporary venues are being constructed, but at a low cost, where it's just a temporary thing that will be taken down. I think moving forward, yeah, this is a priority for the IOC, and I think they're looking more and more at cities that are potential hosts having the infrastructure and having a lot of the things in place before they award the games to that city.

And Los Angeles in 2028 is a great example of this. Los Angeles won the 2028 games in part because they have football stadiums, they have dorm buildings at USC and UCLA, they can use to house athletes. They have infrastructure. They have a lot of the things that you already need, and it's more of a situation where the IOC can roll in and roll out without totally disrupting the city. And I think that's something long-term, as they continue to award the games in 2030s and the 2040s, there is going to be more of an emphasis on that. They want cities that have existing venues, maybe they've already hosted the Olympics previously and they still have everything set up, but they don't want to be in a situation where giant high rises are being constructed and then immediately torn down, or competition venues are just being vacated and overrun just a couple years after the Olympics end.

Dana Taylor:

The Olympic Games will begin on July 26th. The Paralympic games begin on August 28th. As you reported, the most fun bit of recycling is tied to this year's medals for both games. What's special about the medals this year?

Tom Schad:

Paris, like most Olympic hosts, is really trying to lean into its brand and kind of what makes it well known globally, and you could do that in kind of hokey ways. I think this thing with the medals is actually pretty cool. What they've done is they've put bits of the Eiffel Tower, actually iron bits from the Eiffel Tower into the medals. So athletes that win a medal, obviously it's a cherished possession just to have an Olympic medal, but now they'll also have a little piece of history, and essentially how it's worked is when they've done renovations to the Eiffel Tower, there have been little pieces of iron runoff that they've saved and maintained, and now they're just putting a little chunk right in the middle from that runoff. So again, a cool example, and I think a lot of things that Paris is doing will legitimately be cool in addition to showcasing their country. Other hosts have done it and it's been kind of hokey, but I think this is one of many examples that is actually pretty cool.

Dana Taylor:

It's very cool. So most of us, when we think about Paris, the thought of gourmet food isn't far behind. There's also a unique food vision for the Paris Olympics. Tell us about that, Tom.

Tom Schad:

The one interesting thing is that they're trying to provide more plant-based food than they say previous Olympic hosts have. The other interesting thing there is the organizers are providing things, but also each, I shouldn't say each, but a lot of Olympic, National Olympic Committees also provides food to their own athletes. So this was a big thing in Tokyo and in Beijing, the USOPC, Team USA went to great lengths to provide food separately from organizers for their athletes, so that if you have an athlete who's used to eating spaghetti and meatballs or something before a competition, making sure that they have exactly what those athletes like.

Dana Taylor:

Well, not that Paris needs it, but the Olympics are a way to showcase your city to the rest of the world. Paris is obviously full of iconic landmarks that would make fantastic backdrops. I know you're going to be there. What are you most looking forward to seeing at the Paris 2024 games?

Tom Schad:

A lot of the competition venues right downtown, close to downtown, or in a lot of cases at iconic landmarks. So if you're going to watch beach volleyball or compete in beach volleyball, the Eiffel Tower is going to be your backdrop. The Grand Palais is going to be the site of Olympic fencing and TaeKwonDo, which is gorgeous kind of glass ceiling, a really iconic structure. And then you have Equestrian at Palace of Versailles, which obviously is a little bit outside of Paris, but again, just a very iconic space. So I think that's going to be really cool. And that was kind of, again, part of organizers vision for the entire event, was incorporating the games and making it feel urban and tied into Paris proper. I think that's going to be cool to see that come to fruition and to see some of these sporting events being contested directly in front of landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or the Palace of Versailles.

Dana Taylor:

I'm looking forward to following your coverage when you're there. Thank you, Tom, for joining me on The Excerpt.

Tom Schad:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Wade-Green, and Bradley Glansrock. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt podcast: Clock ticking on cleanup for Paris Olympics