Greg Cote: It's gold, silver and bronze & protests, tension and threats as Paris Olympics begin

Had the world not gone mad, as in dangerously loony, this might be the lighthearted Olympics column it wanted to be.

I’d probably start by making fun of the newest Summer Games sport debuting in these Paris Olympics now underway: Breakdancing. Recall that started as a street dance in Black communities around The Bronx in the 1970s and seemed to ebb and disappear in the ‘80s. It had to have been invented by a chiropractor looking for work, as it often involves spinning on one’s head. Now it’s inexplicably back and goin’ for the gold!

But before you consider breakdancing a ridiculous sport, consider the competition in a graveyard of previously discontinued Olympic events that includes tug-of-war, pistol dueling, horse long jump, live pigeon shooting, one-hand weightlifting, ski ballet and (gotta love a good paradox) ... solo synchronized swimming.

Also, plunge for distance, the investigation of which begs a deep dive.

Of course the all-time gold medal for dumb former Olympic sports has to be poodle clipping, an event test-driven at the first Olympiad hosted by Paris in 1900. A crowd of 6,000 appeared at Bois De Boulogne Park to see which of 128 competitors could shear the fur off the most poodles (caniches in French) in two hours. Avril Lafoule did, denuding 17 yapping caniches.)

Those were simpler times for the Olympics and for humankind in general. Sure, there would be the occasional World War, but sports then, and for decades forward, were our portal to escape and get lost in a welcome break from real life. That does not apply anymore — especially to the Olympics, whose globalism cannot escape from the reality all around, from the politics that seep into everything.

The Paris Olympics states, “The three values of Olympism are excellence, respect and friendship. They constitute the foundation on which the Olympic movement builds its activities to promote sport, culture and education with a view to building a better world.”

Quaint. Desperately needed, except the politics of the day and our oft-toxic divide as people combats daily the idea and ideal of friendship and a better world.

And thus the Paris Games launched ceremonially Friday with a boat parade of nations along the river Seine for what has been called by some the most politically charged Olympiad since 1968, when African American U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal stand in Mexico City as the Star-Spangled Banner played in symbolic protest over racial conditions in their country.

Four years later at the ‘72 Games in Munich, members of the Palestinian Black September militant group took hostage and eventually killed 11 Israeli athletes, coaches and officials.

The Olympics have rarely been apolitical and free of controversy since — and are not today, in Paris, where Palestinian-Israeli conflict again is an unfortunate player in the inability of sports to insulate from the real world.

COVID restrictions prevented crowds at the previous Winter and Summer Olympics. Now crowds have returned in full in Paris, cause for celebration but also concern as France deals with threats of anarchy and terrorism.

When I first heard of plans for an open parade of nations along the famed river — with LeBron James and young tennis star Coco Gauff the flagbearers for Team USA — my first thought was that athletes would be dangerously exposed to any security threats.

There will be an open swimming event on the Seine despite fears of bacteria including E. coli in the river.

As Americans cheer for James, Gauff, swimming star Katie Ledecky, gymnastics G.O.A.T. Simone Biles, track star Sha’Carri Richardson and others to bring home gold, above it all lingers the quiet dread: Can Paris get through the next two-plus weeks without major controversy — or should I say further controversy?

Already, organized infrastructure sabotage has struck as the Games unfurl and the world watches. Friday, France’s high-speed rail network was hit with widespread acts of vandalism and arson attacks preventing travel into Paris from across the rest of France and Europe just hours before the opening ceremony.

These Olympics already have had the small controversies you’d expect. The captain of Japan’s artistic gymnastics team sent home for smoking and drinking. The Iraqi judoka who failed a drug test. Even Canada suspending its women’s soccer coach and spying on opponents with a drone.

There are larger concerns.

“Things are very tense in Paris,” said Dave Zirin, sports editor of TheNation.com, from the city on the What A Day podcast. “This is not a bunch of people sitting around sipping wine waiting for the Games to start.”

Thousands are protesting across Paris over the disruption of lives caused by hosting the Games. And against French president Emmanuel Macron. And over the relocation of some 12,500 migrants and unhoused persons who were herded into buses and relocated away from Paris in a social cleansing. Others are protesting the militarization of police as a heavily armed security force of some 70,000 including 20,000 working undercover patrols the city and Olympic venues.

(Mercifully, one threatened protest, a mass defecation in the river Seine, has not transpired.)

Other protests have continued over Russia’s unprovoked and ongoing war on Ukraine, and on Israeli’s continuing retaliatory assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the October 7 attack on Israeli by Gaza-based Hamas. Palestinian rights are a huge issue in Paris. “Genocide Is Not A Sport” signs are all over. There have been protests over the International Olympic Committee not banning Israeli athletes, and the 88 of them representing that nation in Paris are under 24-hour protection.

All of this is the drumbeat of this Olympics, the dissonance in the background amid the cheering as Team USA and the rest of the world goes for the gold while hoping for civility and peace.

Meantime it’s still OK — maybe even medicinal — to marvel and smile that breakdancing is actually now an Olympic sport ... and to secretly sort of wish that poodle clipping still was.