It was legendary Hollywood film producer Sam Goldwyn who once inadvertently summed up the Olympic Games while talking about the kind of explosive films he dreamed of making.
“We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax,” he said, embracing the sentiment of the true Olympic athlete of go big or go home.
And so, Friday night’s Opening Ceremony kicked open an Olympic door that was already slightly ajar with men’s rugby sevens, archery, handball and football giving some sneak previews during the week of the blockbuster that lies ahead.
With rugby into the medals phase at Stade de France and group stage football on its way in Paris, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes and St Etienne, this weekend the Olympics moved into full spate, firstly in barges along the river Seine and then around the city.
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With Irish athletes today involved in boxing in the Paris Arena, hockey in Stade Yves du Manoir, women’s rugby in Stade de France, gymnastics in the Bercy Arena, cycling time trials and rowing at the Nautical Stadium at Vaires-sur-Marne, the narratives have yet to be written.
But the storylines are well known, running the gamut from courage and inspiration down to heartbreak and despair. They run every four years with just the main characters changing.
One thing the athletes understand does not change is how the Games can find them out, exploit weakness. Harsh lessons are learned. Just now, especially, the rugby players know how that feels.
As good as New Zealand and as good as Fiji, they couldn’t find a way to win, couldn’t find a way to beat teams they were better than and put themselves into medal games.
As a teacher the Olympics can be cruel and now Irish rugby must go and learn how to find a way for Los Angeles 2028, of course four years too late for some.
That has always been the nature of the Games and will be over the coming weeks. At the Olympics the victories are glorious and life affirming, defeat beastly and hurtful as decades-long career ambitions implode.
Then you think of Sonia O’Sullivan’s homily to talent and perseverance over Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996 before a sliver medal arrived in Sydney 2000, reaffirming another side to the Olympic character. It doesn’t always give athletes what they deserve.
But when they pour their souls into spinning on a pommel horse, rowing a boat, swimming in a pool, or hitting a shuttlecock, it bleeds into the side of human nature where all the infatuations and obsessions are harboured.
There nothing can balance the Olympic books except one dazzling victory or one triumphant day in the sun when it all comes good.
For Ireland, at least, we have packed many of them like mules with our stacked expectations. Kellie Harrington begins the defence of her Olympic lightweight title on Monday, while Rhys McClenaghan working the pommel is in on everyone’s list of probable medals.
Like Harrington, who is seeking to become the first Irish boxer to successfully defend an Olympic title, so too will any colour of medal be a first for McClenaghan and Irish gymnastics.
There is Rhasidat Adeleke, already a European running superstar and probably needing to run faster over 400m than ever to make the podium, who is already being lionised before a heat is run. The rowers, too, hope to break new ground with Paul O’Donovan and Fintan Lynch defending the gold medals they captured in Tokyo, while Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, are two more on the lists of many under “have the ability”. The question is whether they can harness their best for four rounds at Golf National in Versailles.
Then, the Olympics is much bigger than one nation and from US gymnast Simone Biles, the four-time Olympic champion, in Paris for her comeback Games, to basketball’s LeBron James and tennis star Coco Gauff, it’s a modern-day phenomenon while holding to a wistful history and the image of boater hats and wooden framed racquets. That and the French team wearing Louis Vuitton trunks at the Opening Ceremony.
And so it goes. Even if the Olympic Games is not invited into every Irish household, it has a way of charming itself into affections. Over the next few weeks until the closing ceremony takes place on August 11th, it will insinuate itself into livingrooms unannounced, peek out from the newsagent stands and fill the radio waves.
It will flood podcasts, lead the news and make itself a topic of conversation.
The slogan for the 32 sports and 329 events is Games Wide Open. For Ireland’s biggest-ever team of 133 athletes on the 100th anniversary of first competing in 1924, that will do quite nicely for now.
