Catherine Field: France Correspondent on the success of the Paris Olympics

The Paris Olympics is going down as a success among Parisians. 

Newstalk ZB Correspondent Catherine Field is on the ground in the French capital, where she says hosting the Games was seen as a throw of the dice for the City of Love. 

She told Mike Hosking that with most of the stadiums outdoors, security was always going to be an issue, but it proved to be a success. 

New Zealand's team is now on the way home with our best ever medal haul. 

In all, we won 20: ten Gold, seven Silver, and three Bronze. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Catherine Field, greetings to you, good morning mate, how you
how are you all feeling? You're sitting there in the
glow of success? Do you reckon?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Oh? I think so everyone's realized that, yes, it was
a big throw of the dice five Harris to put
on this enormous Olympic show over two weeks where most
of the stadium's outdoors people were able to if they
didn't have tickets, were able to look inside. The security
was always going to be a nightmare. A lot of
people said, don't do it, just do don't do it,

(00:31):
and they did it and it worked. So I think
everyone's kind of on a bit of a buzz. And
you know, Mike, even the Parisians are a bit chirpy
at the moment.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Good stuff. Security seemed to work. It rained more than
I thought. The scene was a mistake, but security seemed
to work. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I think that's fair. But you do have to remember,
Mike that they brought in more than one hundred thousand
private security guards, gendarmes, police soldiers. And you look at it,
and you look at the numbers, for example, for pickpockets
on the Paris Metro, virtually none this whole time you
look at sort of petty crime, virtually none around Paris.

(01:09):
So yeah, it did work, but at the big cost
of a constant police presence in central Paris. But now
every means said, make a lot of these arenas were
in a very small area, so it was actually only
like one suburb and a bit across the other side
of the sand on the right bank, where you had
this big police presence.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
As a model, and I was reading a lot yesterday
about Ala and how they're doing, and they're a city
of Stadia and all that sort of stuff. As a model,
would Paris go again, given what they already had versus
what they had to spend, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I think so, And I'm judging that on just what
they're saying about the what is it the twenty thirty
Winter Olympics, which are going to be in France. Who
they are, and they've decided not to just go for
one particular town like Chamani, which has had the Olympics before.
They're going for a whole region, So they're going to
be spreading and around areas of France like this that's

(02:02):
already got the infrastructure. So they feel that this model
has worked. They feel that it can work again up
in the mountains in the snow.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
All right, very nice and of course you might want
to get back to try and I take it during
the games you didn't organize a government that we missed.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
You didn't miss anything. Why you know, really might to
be honest with you. It is going to be a
harsh landing for President Macron the next day or two
because whilst he has been shuttling between Paris and his
home on the south of France, the politics has gone
on and people have been jogging for position. People have
been making it known who they think should be Prime
Minister and various other cabinet posts. So he's going to

(02:42):
have a rude awakening when he comes back because even
though people are happy about the Olympics, they're happy about
the number of medals France got, they're still very unhappy
with him and they're very unhappy at not having a government.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Exactly. Go well, catch up next Tuesday. Appreciate it very much.
Catherine Field in France with US this Morning. For more
from the MICAUS Breakfast, listen live to News Talk Set
B from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.