Inscribe Paris 2024 on the Vélodrome stadium. This is enough to startle the inhabitants of the Marseille city, and especially the Marseillais who support the football club. They already see it as sacrilege. If Marseille will host several events during the 2024 Olympic Games, including nautical events and football matches, there is no question for some of seeing the mention “Paris 2024” appear on its emblematic stadium.
The controversy arose from a photomontage published on Facebook by the Olympic Games committee on April 24. In the photo, the Orange Vélodrome stadium appears in the foreground with the mention “Paris 2024” on the fronton. And the blue color of the Mediterranean in the background does not seem to have made Internet users forget the small inscription.
“Is there the sea in Paris?”, amused a first Internet user while Parisians retorted with irony: “Paris on their stadium, but you will never see Marseille on that of Paris” or even “I saw marked Paris on the velodrome is good I can say that I will have seen everything”. Comments that may have annoyed Marseillais stung to the quick, not hesitating to speak of “profanation”. For them, the symbol does not pass.
And the inhabitants are not the only ones who are not in favor of this registration… the municipality too. If the City clarified that it was subject to a contract dating from the previous candidacy, it promised to find alternative solutions by approaching the Olympic Games committee, reports BFMTV Marseille.
Samia Ghali, deputy in charge of municipal strategy on the city’s structuring projects, did not hesitate to affirm that this would be experienced “like a confiscation”, also reports the daily Ouest-France. “There are things that are discussed. And you know that in Marseille we don’t always do things like elsewhere, ”she added.
“An evolution of this signage towards, for example, the Olympic rings, seems to us the best alternative”, therefore wrote the elected official in a letter addressed to Tony Estanguet, chairman of the 2024 Olympic Games committee. “This registration, if it is maintained, will deeply clash with the history and sensibilities of the Marseillaises and Marseillais who are particularly, as you know, attached to their stadium and their club, ”she insisted.
