Paris has a message for people worried about Brisbane 2032: Don’t be

He predicts Paris’ planned parade of nations along the Seine, culminating in the lighting of a cauldron before the Eiffel Tower, will provide another “goose-bump moment”, and says he is inspired – though perhaps a little intimidated – by the way Paris has reshaped the Olympics in the city’s image.

“They are really going to give the Olympic visitor – whether it’s a physical visitor or a digital visitor – a Parisian experience,” he says.

Brisbane, he says, can’t match Paris for art, culture or skateboarding in the Place de la Concorde, but it can offer something else.

“Brisbane, south-east Queensland and Australia is seen around the world as a lifestyle superpower,” he says. “We are how the rest of the world wants to live. We are a country not without problems, but in the main, we are seen as a country of stability, warmth, friendliness and hospitality.

“We are fun. We [have] an amazing environment. Our Games will show that off.”

Exactly what this will look like in 2032, particularly in the design of the opening ceremony and choice of venue for the athletics – the centrepiece sport at any Olympics and Paralympics – is still to be determined.

While the Queensland government and Australia’s Olympics supremo John Coates have declared their preference to hold the athletics at QSAC, the stadium built for the 1982 Commonwealth Games – and spare taxpayers the expense of constructing a modern new venue in Brisbane’s Victoria Park – all major infrastructure decisions are effectively in hiatus until after the October state election.

This political pause, while not ideal, still leaves Brisbane with more time to plan its Games than Paris had when it was named host city in 2017. Paris’ original concept for the Games, outlined in its bid documents, included a traditional opening ceremony in the Stade de France. It was only in 2021 that organisers floated the radical idea of staging the opening ceremony along the river.

Graham Quirk, the former Brisbane mayor who first pitched the idea of a south-east Queensland Games to IOC president Thomas Bach, conducted a government-commissioned review of Brisbane’s Games infrastructure this year and concluded that a refurbished QSAC would do little to showcase the city or cater for its future needs.

Quirk favours the Victoria Park project and argues that Brisbane, a fast-growing city without a world-class sports stadium, should be more ambitious about what it wants to achieve from hosting the Games.

He also says that despite still having time, the city needs to get cracking on its Olympic preparations.

“The benefit of having such a long runway is to get organised and start getting your projects in an orderly pipeline,” he says. “If you keep doing business as usual you are not going to get there on time. There has to be an ignited sense of urgency.”

Beckers-Vieujant says while Paris’s vision for its Games has remained intact – an open, accessible Olympics staged at a series of temporary venues erected at world-famous landmarks along the Seine – the details have progressively changed. He says this is consistent with the IOC’s new approach towards bid and host cities, with Games organisers given more time to plan and change their plans.

A benefit of this, at least in theory, is that once you start building, you “go full speed and you don’t look back”, he says.

Another feature of Paris is the breadth and stability of political support for the Games since they were awarded.

When Paris was announced as the 2024 host city, Emmanuel Macron was a popular, newly elected president, Anne Hidalgo already the mayor of Paris, and former Olympic slalom canoeist Tony Estanguet the chairman of the bid committee and public face of the Games.

Seven years later, Macron and Hidalgo, though less popular than they were, are still in office and Estanguet is nearly the end of his stint as Paris 2024 president.

Paris 2024 chief executive Etienne Thobois is in regular contact with Liveris and other members of the Brisbane 2032 team and is hesitant to give them advice. When pressed, he offers the following: “Get your vision clear, rally around that vision, so that all stakeholders agree with that vision. And then, you know, get moving.”

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