PARIS: In western Paris, the swimming pool where national hero Leon Marchand won four gold medals at this summer’s Olympics in the French capital is being stripped down and prepared for a move. The pool was part of one the many temporary sports facilities used during the Games, built inside the Paris Defense Arena, a stadium to the west of the city which was deafening during each of Marchand’s medal-winning exploits. Around 25 kilometers of scaffolding are being pulled down by the pool, while the 50-metre water basin itself - made of hundreds of aluminum panels bolted together - will soon be dismantled and sent by truck to a new home in a northern suburb.

The Paris Games relied more than any previous Olympics on the use of temporary sports facilities in a deliberate bid to keep costs and carbon emissions low. It was also a way of avoiding the sort of wasteful spending that has plagued previous Games which have seen shiny new venues fall empty and into disrepair once the Olympics carousel moves on. “We didn’t put in place the gifting strategy recently. We’ve had it mind since the start of the project,” Marie Barsacq, head of impact and legacy at Paris 2024, stressed to reporters. “We learned a lot from previous editions.”

Legacy

The 50-metre pool is destined for Sevran, a disadvantaged, high-immigration part of the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris which has around a quarter of the number of pool facilities per inhabitant as the national average. Sevran plans to call it the “Leon Marchand pool”, with the Paris 2024 organizing committee paying donating the pool, while the local council will pick up the tab for most of the running costs.

“The greatest story and symbol we could create for our project is making these Games useful, making them games that encourage people to do sport,” Paris 2024 operations director Edouard Donnelly told reporters. A second pool used for training at the Defense Arena is set to be cut in two, with half of it to form a new 25-metre pool in the Bagnolet area of Seine-Saint-Denis. The Seine-Saint-Denis region, the poorest in mainland France, has received around 80 percent of public infrastructure spending linked to the Games, including a new aquatics centre that was one of only three permanent new venues built.

Redistribution

Elsewhere around the French capital, workers are pulling down the scaffolding at other temporary stadiums built at historic locations around the city which served as the telegenic backdrops for the Games. The BMX park at the urban sports centre on Place de la Concorde has been dismantled and sent to Cluses in the French Alps where it will be used for a world BMX event in 2027. The sand from the beach volleyball court in front of the Eiffel Tower has been sent to a sports centre in Marville in Seine-Saint-Denis. Marville is also expected to be the final destination of one of the skate parks - if it can be dismantled without too much damage - while another is heading to southern Montpellier.

Southwest of Paris, workers have moved in to convert the mountain-biking competition track near the town of Elancourt into a facility that can be used by local riders, as well as walkers, from April next year. Pierre Rondeau, a sports expert at the left-leaning Jean-Jaures Foundation, said the transfers of sports equipment from wealthy central Paris to poorer parts of the capital region and the rest of France made sense. “Paris can afford to give this infrastructure away,” he told AFP. “Paris already has stadiums, infrastructures, clubs. The city is well equipped. “It’s the rest of France and other towns that will benefit.” — AFP