“Baguette de pain” perfume stamp, QR code laundry bag and tattoo parlor, the finds of the Olympic village – Libération

Before the arrival of the sports delegations on July 18, guided tour of the streets and buildings of the Olympic village in Seine-Saint-Denis.

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There will definitely be one. An object that the organizers of the Paris Games will not have thought of in their pampering of the Olympic village. But the flaw will be hard to find given the (non-exhaustive) list of finds presented this Tuesday, July 2 during a walk (exhaustive, it is) in the Seine-Saint-Denis base camp which is preparing to welcome more than 14,000 residents. That is to say “a small town whose inhabitants would have all decided to move in on the same day”, July 18, smiles Augustin Tran Van Chau, deputy director of the Olympic village and guide of the day, in a neon vest-wearing spree between rue Alice Guy and the Ada Lovelace mail.

Village people

Spread over three municipalities (Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L’Ile-Saint-Denis), the village has 82 buildings, 3,000 apartments, 7,200 rooms that can accommodate 14,250 people during the Olympic Games (9,000 athletes and just over 5,000 accompanying persons, coaches, doctors or physiotherapists), divided into 206 national delegations. There will be a third fewer occupants at the end of August – 9,000 – during the Paralympics. In total, 16,000 mattresses were delivered by the Japanese manufacturer Airweave (including 1,400 for the media village located a little further away in Seine-Saint-Denis).

Contrary to initial promises, Paris 2024 has ordered 2,500 air conditioners to equip the apartments “at the request of the national delegations to meet this extremely specific need for athletes who are playing the match or competition of their lives [et dont] “The comfort and recovery requirements are higher than a standard summer,” says Augustin Van Tran Chau. The village has a geothermal system that allows the rooms to be cooled, which are supposed to be 6°C cooler than outside.

Over the entire duration of the Olympic Games, Sodexo plans to serve 100,000 breakfasts on site and 80,000 meals, while Accor has installed 12 laundromats, each with twenty washing machines and twenty dryers. Even the washing techniques are included in the documents that are passed down from Olympic Games to Olympic Games between host countries. While waiting for the athletes and to avoid making any faux pas (Teddy Riner in a girl’s-size kimono would look bad), “we are doing tests with our own uniforms, so if you see people with shortened pants and faded sweatshirts, it’s us,” laughs the reception manager. The bath towels will be changed every two days, the sheets every four.

Hotspots

The post office and the clinic are must-sees in any self-respecting Olympic village. The tattoo parlor less so… “We were told that the athletes liked to leave with the Olympic rings or the date of their medal on their arm,” says one organizer. The tattooists will be set up in the “Village club” section, which, as its name suggests, will be a vast “recreational space” with an open terrace (alcohol-free, Coca-Cola reigns supreme here and everywhere), seven large screens to watch the events of colleagues and opponents, massage chairs and arcade games. The latter were ordered after consultation with the athletes’ commission, a way to chill out and let off steam before or after the competition. Strangely, we discover an “ironing room” in one of the ten “Super Resident Centers”, which are, according to Accor, spaces “for rest and conviviality”. We relax as best we can, we don’t judge.

More conventional, there will be a beauty salon (hairdresser, manicurist, barber) with extended hours and a “nursery” to welcome the children of athletes during the day, who are not allowed in the Olympic village at night. Too risky for the sleep of competitors. Next to the Carrefour supermarket, Fnac has created a “small” cultural space that sells “products decided in consultation with the IOC”. That is to say a lot of postcards, puzzles or Eiffel Tower notebooks. As for books, there are pocket books in English, Virginie Grimaldi’s bestsellers and Franck Thilliez’s thrillers in French.

Some of the facilities are nestled in the buildings of a power plant built in the 1930s to supply power to the Paris metro. With its white, lime-coloured bricks, the Maxwell hall houses a huge 3,000 m² fitness centre, which still smells of plastic after the delivery of 1,800 brand new pieces of equipment, including 100 treadmills lined up. After the summer, it will be converted into offices for the Ministry of the Interior.

Tips and tricks

The laundry bags (two per athlete) were equipped with a QR code, so that the path of a leotard could be traced before the rhythmic gymnastics final and the jerseys in the national colours delivered to the right delegations. The gym is equipped with several prototypes of “Biostrength”, a weight bench invented by the Italian company Technogym, where a motor creates the necessary resistance. No more need for lead discs, an artificial intelligence adapts according to what the athlete wants to work on.

Even though the French basketball players (by far the greatest Blues) will be taking up residence at the Insep, in the Bois de Vincennes, the ultra-resistant 2-meter cardboard beds (which had already made headlines at the Tokyo Olympics) can be extended by 20 cm without resorting to a Swiss army knife. A “Mattress Adjustment Center” application will scan your weight, height and sport in order to “optimize nights and recovery.” Finally, next to the Paris 2024 board in the official colors (baby blue and pink), the Post Office issued a series of “French baguette” stamps in May, decorated with the tricolor. To make the shot perfect, paper and glue were flavored with “bread” scent. We tested it, it smells more like caramel, but we’re not going to quibble.