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JO: strong emotions versus sad passions

What a contrast when, here, the sad passions of angry individualism and health care I-don’t care, are superimposed strong emotions from the Tokyo Olympics where athletes are in unison with our human values. Immense joy, abysmal distress, tremendous generosity, so many exceptional moments far removed from the resentments, lies and violence that sometimes make us doubt our common aptitude for “forming a society.” “

First to remember these tricolor judokas carried away in a hopping saraband fed by indestructible batteries after having achieved what will remain as a historic feat: winning the gold medal by mixed team against Japan. Faced with defeated Japanese of hieratic dignity, the winners could savor a team victory in the country which (culturally) invented judo and which remains (sportingly) at the top of individual medals.

Japan had never been beaten in such a test and it was beautifully by a small band of French people of a mix that was not only gender, like a plural France denigrated by some, denied by others. Admittedly this is the lot of all the victories acquired in relay or teams – the fencers bringing gold and silver to Tokyo bear witness to it – but in judo in the country which has made this martial art a philosophy of self-control and respect for the adversary, this collective feat takes on a whole new dimension.

Conversely, how can you not be seized by the personal drama experienced by Simone Biles, this American gymnast, the greatest of all time to date, who defeated by her “inner demons” accumulates the forfeits of events that promised her yet to be multi-medalist. This 24-year-old young woman, with the body of a preteen daring figures defying the laws of gravity in space, and the plasticity of bodies, but there were torments in her linked to her past – abandoned by drug addicted parents, sexually assaulted by a trainer – which are said to be stronger than any pre-written sports narrative, as social revenge or individual redemption, as the United States regularly delivers to us.

And finally this wonderful moment when two high jumpers – the Italian Gianmarco Tamberi and the Qatari Mutaz Barshim – perfectly tied after three failed attempts at 2.39m decide to share the gold medal rather than launch in a kind of “play off” where one of them would end up winning over the other. Hats off to the sportsmen! These Olympics, locked away because of Covid in the manic constraints of a Japan only consenting to deliver us televised images in sports arenas emptied of all popular exuberance, are already proving to be fertile in legends. As long as it lasts… until next Saturday.

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