Category Archive: Paris 2024

Olympic Champ Tommie Smith still raises Clinched Fist 56-Years Later.

Paris, June 11, 2024, by Socrates George Kazolias

Tommie Smith shocked the world of sports when, after winning the two-hundred-meter Gold Medal in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, he raised a black-gloved fist and bowed his head during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner to protest discrimination in the United States. Third-placed African American, John Carlos, did the same.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico 1968. Photo Creative Commons

But that display of protest to racism in America almost never happened. John Carlos “forgot to bring his black gloves” even though they had planned it before. So, Tommie gave Carlos his other glove and that is why Tommie has his right gloved fist raised while Carlos his left.

“I question to this day what is the reason for the possibility he forgot his gloves in the first place,” Tommie told reporters of the Anglo-American Press Association on June 11th. “We all have flawed minds, but I feel if you have events such as this, you can’t forget.”

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Paris-2024 – Opening Ceremony in Question

Paris, April 18, 2024, Socrates George Kazolias

French authorities are having second thoughts on their ambitious plan to hold the Olympic opening ceremony on the river Seine. “There are Plans B and C which we are preparing in parallel,” the French president, Emanuel Macron, said on April 15. Macron said he was working for an “Olympic truce” for Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan… and that he would “ask” Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to help achieve it.

From the beginning, those in charge of Olympic security have been hostile to the idea of an opening ceremony, originally planned with over 200 boats sailing six kilometers down the Seine while more than 600,000 people stand along the quays watching the athletes and the artists.

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Paris: Bouquinistes First Casualties of 2024 Olympics

Paris, October 12, 2023, by Socrates George Kazolias:

A Bouquiniste near le Pont Neuf who will be dismantled before the games. (Kazolias)

Who can imagine Paris without those green boxes fixed to the walls on both banks of the river Seine where vendors, called Bouquinistes, sell rare and old books, ancient periodicals, and posters? They are as iconic to Paris as Notre Dame, the Louvre, or the Eiffel Tower. To the dismay of the Bouquinistes, the book stalls must go before the Olympic Opening Ceremony next July.

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Paris 2024 Olympics on Track to a Security Nightmare

Paris, Jan. 23, 2023—By Socrates George Kazolias

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are on track (and field) to start in a little over 18 months and they promise to be a ‘Games of Firsts and Superlatives.’ The first ‘first’ was at the closing ceremony in Japan in August 2021, with a limited number of spectators and a year later than originally scheduled, due to Covid.

Firsts of Firsts

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