Speaker 1: Already, and this is the Daily Oh, this is the
Speaker 1: Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Wednesday,
Speaker 2: the twenty fourth of July. I'm Zara, I'm emma, just
Speaker 2: days out from the Olympics opening ceremony, thousands of athletes
Speaker 2: and descending on Paris for two weeks of competition.
Speaker 3: Paris had the better part of a decade to prepare
Speaker 3: for this moment after it won a bid to host
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four Olympics and Paralympics, but recent political instability,
Speaker 3: rising crime rates and temperatures, concerns of over tourism, bed bugs,
Speaker 3: and even e coli in this seen has left people
Speaker 3: asking is Paris ready. We'll explore that question in today's
Speaker 3: deep Dive, but first, Zara. What's making headlines?
Speaker 2: US Vice President Kamala Harris has secured enough support within
Speaker 2: her party to be named the Democrats presidential nominee. It
Speaker 2: means that Harris is almost certain to be confirmed as
Speaker 2: her party's candidate at next month Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Comes after President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from
Speaker 2: the race against Donald Trump for reelection. In a statement
Speaker 2: Harris said she fully intends to unite her party nation
Speaker 2: and defeat Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: In November, animal welfare authorities have shut down Tasmania's biggest
Speaker 3: puppy farm. More than two hundred and fifty dogs and
Speaker 3: puppies were surrendered to the RSPCA after a labradoodle breeding
Speaker 3: facility was accused of overbreeding its dogs for nearly two
Speaker 3: years between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three. The
Speaker 3: breeders faced fines of up to two hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: three thousand dollars for the breach, but agreed to shut
Speaker 3: down operations and hand over hundreds of labradoodles instead. The
Speaker 3: RSPCA is now seeking to rehome the puppies, and Dad
Speaker 3: has launched an appeal. It's also appealing to the Tasmanian
Speaker 3: government to overhaul legislation to prevent puppy farms from overbreeding.
Speaker 2: The chief executive of CrowdStrike, which is the cybersecurity firm
Speaker 2: responsible for last week's global IT outage, has been called
Speaker 2: to testify in front of US lawmakers in Washington. CrowdStrike
Speaker 2: says a failed software update led to widespread outages in
Speaker 2: what's been called one of the world's biggest IT disasters.
Speaker 2: US House leaders want the CrowdStrike boss to face questions
Speaker 2: about how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike
Speaker 2: is taking.
Speaker 3: And today's good news. A ninety eight year old physicist
Speaker 3: has received an honorary doctorate seventy five years after making
Speaker 3: a breakthrough discovery in particle physics. Rosemary Fowler was a
Speaker 3: researcher at the University of Bristol. Her nineteen forty eight
Speaker 3: research contributed to her supervisor, Cecil Powell, winning a Nobel
Speaker 3: Prize for physics in nineteen fifty. Fowler left UNI before
Speaker 3: finishing her PhD so she could support her young family
Speaker 3: during post World War two food rationing. Now she's been
Speaker 3: honored in a private graduation ceremony. Bristol University's chancellor said,
Speaker 3: Fowler's intellectual rigor and curiosity paved the way for critical discoveries.
Speaker 2: And it feels like we have been waiting a very
Speaker 2: long time for this Olympic and Paralympic Games to actually begin.
Speaker 2: I know it's only been three years, but it's like
Speaker 2: the only time I ever focus on sports, or it
Speaker 2: feels like a lifetime. But this week the Paris Olympics finally.
Speaker 3: Begin, yeap, And I think that's a sentiment a lot
Speaker 3: of people can relate to, who might not love sport
Speaker 3: but love the Olympics. So there were plenty of headlines
Speaker 3: in the lead up to the twenty twenty Olympics in Tokyo,
Speaker 3: which were famously delayed until twenty twenty one thanks to
Speaker 3: the pandemic. But the Paris Olympics have had their fair
Speaker 3: share of headlines too, in the lead up to this
Speaker 3: week's opening ceremony.
Speaker 2: And so I think that you know, for a viewer
Speaker 2: or certainly someone that's not competing, so you turn on
Speaker 2: the TV, you get excited, you watch it, and then
Speaker 2: it ends. Obviously, in real life it has a lot
Speaker 2: more of a tale than that. It's a very long
Speaker 2: process to get to the Olympics, and at least for
Speaker 2: the host nation to get to the Olympics. Where did
Speaker 2: this Olympic journey start? For Paris?
Speaker 3: Well, like any country who wants to host the Olympics
Speaker 3: and the Paralympics, the conversation begins many many many years
Speaker 3: before the games themselves. France formally put forward itself as
Speaker 3: a candidate to host twenty twenty four in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: so presumably conversations were had in the years leading up
Speaker 3: to that point. They put a formal bid in and
Speaker 3: France won that bid in September twenty seventeen, at the
Speaker 3: same time that La was named as host for the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight Games.
Speaker 2: And presumably the logic behind giving such a long kind
Speaker 2: of lead in period is because of how long it
Speaker 2: takes to prepare for an Olympic Games.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and there is a lot to prepare for from
Speaker 3: a financial and infrastructure standpoint alone. There is so much
Speaker 3: to do. Cities have to transform themselves to accommodate all
Speaker 3: the events in appropriate stadiums and sporting facilities. Plus we've
Speaker 3: got the Olympic Village where athletes are housed during the Games.
Speaker 3: Plus transport infrastructure has to be managed to deal with
Speaker 3: the influx of spectators. We've got safety and security expenses.
Speaker 3: Whether or not a city actually has these requirements already,
Speaker 3: or has the capacity to build these requirements or to
Speaker 3: meet these requirements is a major consideration for the committee.
Speaker 2: Who decides who gets to host.
Speaker 3: So the International Olympic Committee, before they say yeah, Paris,
Speaker 3: You've got the Games, they look at the kind of
Speaker 3: structure set up within a city already and its capacity
Speaker 3: to meet the demands of hosting.
Speaker 2: It all sounds very expensive, you know, when you're talking
Speaker 2: about having to build this infrastructure from scratch in some scenarios,
Speaker 2: and it really reminds me of when we were talking
Speaker 2: about Victoria pulling out of the twenty twenty six Commonwealth
Speaker 2: Games that was of course announced by former Premier Daniel
Speaker 2: Andrews around this time last year.
Speaker 4: Six to seven billion dollars is well and truly too
Speaker 4: much for a twelve day sporting event. I will not
Speaker 4: take money out of hospitals and schools in order to
Speaker 4: fund an event that is three times the cost as
Speaker 4: estimated and budgeted for last year.
Speaker 2: The Commonwealth Games is a smaller version of the Olympic Game,
Speaker 2: So what do we know about how much hosting the
Speaker 2: Olympics and the Paralympics costs?
Speaker 3: As you mentioned with that Commgames example, the financial burden
Speaker 3: of hosting these sorts of global sporting events is really
Speaker 3: being discussed more and more, and of course the Commgames
Speaker 3: are a smaller event, but that decision by Dan Andrews
Speaker 3: and Victoria to pull out of hosting actually inspired a
Speaker 3: study into this exact matter interesting. Oxford University published these
Speaker 3: findings in May and they said the Tokyo Olympics, the Olympics,
Speaker 3: not even the Paralympics, cost around twenty billion Australian dollars.
Speaker 2: Just to drop in the ocean, just to drop in.
Speaker 3: The ocean, and researchers really wanted to investigate this financial
Speaker 3: spend and the financial risk of these mega sporting events.
Speaker 3: It noted that the last three Summer Games overran budgets
Speaker 3: by one hundred and eighty five percent. Now that's not
Speaker 3: even including road, rail, airport, hotel and other infrastructure, and
Speaker 3: those factors can often cost more than the games themselves,
Speaker 3: these researchers found. And this is not a new problem.
Speaker 3: When we look back over the decades. Montreal, a Canadian city,
Speaker 3: hosted its Summer Games in nineteen seventy six and took
Speaker 3: thirty years to pay off their stadium. Some of our
Speaker 3: listeners might remember headlines from the Rio Olympic.
Speaker 2: Games say that's the one that I remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the first time that it really stood
Speaker 3: out to me kind of the scale of the burden
Speaker 3: on these cities to get ready. And yeah, you might
Speaker 3: remember vision of stadiums that were high builds or not
Speaker 3: yet ready or didn't have proper electricity you're plumbing, you know,
Speaker 3: weeks out from the games. So there is a lot
Speaker 3: of pressure on these cities.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pressure. But presumably the upside is,
Speaker 2: of course, all of the tourism that comes to that
Speaker 2: city for the three weeks of the Olympics and then
Speaker 2: the Paralympics. But balancing that and understanding at the end
Speaker 2: whether it is a net positive or a net negative
Speaker 2: is obviously something that needs to be weighed up. I
Speaker 2: want to go back to Paris specifically though, because I
Speaker 2: think this is a really unusual game in that it's
Speaker 2: happening against a fair bit of political uncertainty. You and
Speaker 2: I have spoken about this on the pub before, but
Speaker 2: can you just at a very high level tell us
Speaker 2: about the context in France right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So these games come at a time of huge
Speaker 3: political uncertainty after a recent election in France, which is
Speaker 3: also managing a summer game set during you know, record
Speaker 3: high temperatures and controversy in the headlines relating to this
Speaker 3: project to clean up the river. There's a lot going
Speaker 3: on in the city of Paris at the moment. So
Speaker 3: a quick refresher on that political uncertainty. There was an election.
Speaker 3: The left wing coalition that was formed during that election
Speaker 3: won the most votes, but the election resulted in a
Speaker 3: hung parliament, so we had a kind of even split
Speaker 3: between the left, the center and the far right alliances.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a presidential election, so Emmanuel Macron's job is safe,
Speaker 3: But this divided result really means that there is no
Speaker 3: clear majority winner, and negotiations are still continuing between the
Speaker 3: parties as to what the future government of France is
Speaker 3: going to look like. Most recently we saw a deal
Speaker 3: between Macron's party and a right wing opposition party, but
Speaker 3: who ends up controlling the government is still a far
Speaker 3: away from being determined.
Speaker 2: And I remember when we spoke about the election results,
Speaker 2: we spoke about the fact that the French PM, Gabriella Tall,
Speaker 2: had handed or offered his resignation, but there was a
Speaker 2: chance he would stay on because of the Olympics. What's
Speaker 2: happened there.
Speaker 3: Yep, So he did resign as PM in the wake
Speaker 3: of the elections. He's part of Macron's Ensemble party, but
Speaker 3: Attil suggested that he could remain in office throughout the
Speaker 3: Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games to maintain government, and we
Speaker 3: ended up seeing President Macron ask him to do just that.
Speaker 3: So Atle has stuck around. He's going to handle day
Speaker 3: to day business until the new government is named, according
Speaker 3: to French officials, and there will be voters who interpret
Speaker 3: this as, you know, a show of stability for the
Speaker 3: nation while it's under such an intense spotlight with the
Speaker 3: games in Paris.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I think that gives us a bit of
Speaker 2: insight into the political context in which these games are
Speaker 2: playing out. But you also mentioned a few other very
Speaker 2: very specific Paris concerns, like the riversen. This is a
Speaker 2: strange one, and I must say I think I missed
Speaker 2: the beginning of this story or I came in late.
Speaker 2: Everyone knew about this, but me, what is happening here?
Speaker 3: Look, in order to answer the question is Paris ready
Speaker 3: to host the Olympics, we have to address another concern,
Speaker 3: which is why have people been threatening to shit in
Speaker 3: the seen?
Speaker 2: No one can ever ever accuse us of not doing
Speaker 2: both highbrow and lowbrow content on this podcast. Yep, very
Speaker 2: important question.
Speaker 3: Investigating the important matters here are the daily os so
Speaker 3: one of the biggest challenges that Paris has faced in
Speaker 3: the lead up to the Olympics has been all about
Speaker 3: cleaning up the River Sen. So this is the river
Speaker 3: that runs right through the heart of Paris out to
Speaker 3: the sea. If you've ever been to Paris, you can't
Speaker 3: miss eral.
Speaker 2: It looks it doesn't look great.
Speaker 3: The river has been scheduled to stage some open water
Speaker 3: swimming events for the Olympics, so that means people competing
Speaker 3: in the water as well as being the site of
Speaker 3: the official opening ceremony. So that takes place Friday night
Speaker 3: local time Saturday morning, very very early for us here
Speaker 3: in Australia. But that's all going to be set along
Speaker 3: the Sin and athletes will be on barges and boats
Speaker 3: going down the river. So the problem with the Sen
Speaker 3: and the lead up to this point is about pollution yea.
Speaker 3: So it's been illegal to swim in this end for
Speaker 3: just over a century because of this pollution concern. But
Speaker 3: when Paris was announced as the host of the Olympics,
Speaker 3: the government committed one point four billion euros or just
Speaker 3: over two point two billion Australian dollars to clean it
Speaker 3: up in time for the Games.
Speaker 2: That is no small task. As I said, if you've
Speaker 2: seen it, you understand what we're dealing with here and
Speaker 2: have a bit of a visual queue. The big question,
Speaker 2: of course, is is it ready so.
Speaker 3: Bacterial tests from as recently as June found traces of E. Coli,
Speaker 3: which rattled a lot of people and athletes and commentators
Speaker 3: and critics of this big cleanup project. Essentially, the finding
Speaker 3: showed the river was still too polluted to host swimming events.
Speaker 3: An official in Paris acknowledged that it wasn't up to pa.
Speaker 3: They blamed recent heavy rain on impacting the results, maybe
Speaker 3: skewing the data. But a group of fed up local
Speaker 3: residents planned a protest against the public money that was
Speaker 3: being spent on this cleanup. They said that money could
Speaker 3: have been better spent on easing cost of living pressures
Speaker 3: on social issues, and when these findings of E. Coli
Speaker 3: came out of that test in June, they said, no,
Speaker 3: we've had enough. We're going to protest in the form
Speaker 3: of defecating in the river. Those plans ended up.
Speaker 2: This is where I came into the story with zero context.
Speaker 3: A lot of people probably came in at that point.
Speaker 3: Those plans ended up being stalled, and it seems like
Speaker 3: protesters have eased off on that threat to the relief
Speaker 3: of many, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: And then last week we had the Mayor of Paris
Speaker 2: swimming in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in an effort to convince locals, to convince
Speaker 3: Olympians and the world, really, we saw the Mayor of
Speaker 3: Paris swim in the seen herself. Last week. Mayor and
Speaker 3: Hidalgo pledged that it would be safe to swim in
Speaker 3: for the Olympics, and she put her money where her
Speaker 3: mouth was and she jumped on in. She tried to
Speaker 3: prove that point. I haven't heard any news of her
Speaker 3: getting sick from that swim. She did look pretty happy
Speaker 3: while she was prancing around in the sense. So, for
Speaker 3: all intents and purposes, it's clean.
Speaker 2: We've just received a very clear scientific analysis from Emma
Speaker 2: Glaspie here at the Daily Ohs. The sin is clean.
Speaker 2: You have nothing to worry about. I want to keep
Speaker 2: moving on because, as we've already touched on, there are
Speaker 2: a couple of elements to this question of whether or
Speaker 2: not Paris is ready for the Games. You know, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, we've got the political context, and another
Speaker 2: we've got the river sen But then there's also another
Speaker 2: element that I've started to see getting a lot of
Speaker 2: coverage recently, which is about security and safety. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously the Olympics and the Paralympics are these huge moments
Speaker 2: of people gathering, and so is Paris prepared in that respect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been a lot of international attention on this factor.
Speaker 3: In particular when we look at the kind of local
Speaker 3: response in Paris from police. There's been a crackdown on
Speaker 3: local crime in recent months that's really been about trying
Speaker 3: to sort of clean up areas of Paris that will
Speaker 3: be on display for certain events, because there are going
Speaker 3: to be events right around the city, not just in
Speaker 3: the middle of the CBD, but that's actually been attributed
Speaker 3: to causing overcrowding in Paris prisons. So there's a whole
Speaker 3: set of social issues from that crackdown. In terms of
Speaker 3: security more broadly, and when we're talking about the thread
Speaker 3: of terrorism. Obviously there are safety concerns with any international
Speaker 3: event of this nature, but there are some sort of
Speaker 3: standout quirks to the Paris Games in particular that will
Speaker 3: require extra security. So that includes you know, this opening
Speaker 3: ceremony that we've touched on, it's going to be outdoors
Speaker 3: and Olympic opening ceremony has never been held outdoors, so
Speaker 3: that's unprecedented. And there's also a bunch of stadiums that
Speaker 3: have popped up as kind of temporary venues. A lot
Speaker 3: of them are open air. They're being built around the city.
Speaker 3: Because of their temporary nature, their kind of security capacity
Speaker 3: is a little bit untested, so there is some concern around,
Speaker 3: you know, the pressure that they will place on officials
Speaker 3: to keep everyone safe. The president of the Paris twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four organizing Committee said that every moment of the Games,
Speaker 3: right from the opening ceremony to all the competitions, has
Speaker 3: a quote specific plan to guarantee the security for all
Speaker 3: the accredited persons and the spectators. We can absolutely guarantee
Speaker 3: that security was the priority for Paris twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: and from this base we will build the concept of celebration.
Speaker 3: So there's also an exclusion zone around the sin. Anyone
Speaker 3: in that zone needs to be properly accredited and be
Speaker 3: able to show accreditation. We can also expect to see
Speaker 3: international security from competing countries. They will often bring their
Speaker 3: own security and there'll be a ramped up presence of
Speaker 3: security at places like local train stations and on the streets.
Speaker 3: In terms of numbers, to give you a sense of
Speaker 3: the scale, we're talking about around fifty five thousand soldiers, police,
Speaker 3: other law enforcement and military personnel during the Games in Paris.
Speaker 3: Fifty five thousand sounds like a lot, but when you
Speaker 3: factor in that they'll be tasked with keeping more than
Speaker 3: ten thousand athletes and million of spectators safe, you know
Speaker 3: it's no small job.
Speaker 2: And before we wrap up, I have been reading a
Speaker 2: lot of headlines about record heat waves in Europe and
Speaker 2: of course the Paris Games are being held kind of
Speaker 2: in the heat of summer. Is that something that's concerned
Speaker 2: for these Olympic Games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely is, and it's a growing concern for
Speaker 3: the Summer Olympics as a concept. More broadly, there is
Speaker 3: a new report that actually flagged these games, the Olympics
Speaker 3: and Paralympics could be the hottest in history. That's after
Speaker 3: record high temperatures in Tokyo at the last Games. And
Speaker 3: these findings came from an Australian athlete led conservation group
Speaker 3: called front Runners and the British Association for Sustainable Sport.
Speaker 3: So that report warned that athletes in these conditions in
Speaker 3: high heat, risk cramping, exhaustion, injury, heat stroke, disruption to
Speaker 3: their sleep patterns that could affect their ability to compete,
Speaker 3: and you know, in the worst case scenario, even the
Speaker 3: risk of death from competing in severe heat. So temperatures
Speaker 3: in Paris at this time of year are forecasted to
Speaker 3: reach or exceed the mid thirties and the Paralympics, which
Speaker 3: are set for the beginning of September. You know, that
Speaker 3: might sound like it's out of the summer period, but
Speaker 3: it could very well also be affected given what this
Speaker 3: report described as the past precedent for heat waves to
Speaker 3: hit France later in the summer. Athletes have also raised
Speaker 3: concerns about a lack of air conditioning in the Olympic village.
Speaker 3: This story made headlines a little while ago, but organizers
Speaker 3: actually ended up backflipping on that. So after this sort
Speaker 3: of initial plan of a really sustainable athletes village that
Speaker 3: would not have air conditioning, news dropped earlier this month
Speaker 3: that two five hundred temporary cooling units would be installed,
Speaker 3: so I'm sure a lot of athletes relieved about that.
Speaker 3: In a press conference this week, the IOC president Thomas
Speaker 3: Buck said the Games would still be quote more sustainable
Speaker 3: than ever.
Speaker 1: I can tell you Paris is ready than ready, and
Speaker 1: we all can prepare for spectacular Olympic Games here in Paris.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of
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