“For suburbanites and Parisians, there are unique hours ahead with these fellow Olympic Games” – Libération

1924-2024, the Olympic Games in Paris

A century ago Paris already hosted the Olympic Games. What did the press say about it at the time? She criticized the choice of the Colombes stadium to host the competitions, predicting insoluble hassles to get there.

Every week with RetroNewsthe BNF press site, the 1924 Paris Games as the press of the time told them.

Why did an incident in London a year before the 1924 Paris Olympics alarm the French press. On April 28, 1923, Wembley Stadium welcomed the public for the first time for the FA Cup final. Huge popular success: 126,047 tickets were officially sold but between 150,000 and 250,000 spectators crowded around the enclosure. The situation can only take a dramatic turn. We must send the mounted police to disperse the crowd that wants to enter. More than 1,000 people were injured in the stampede. The Wembley drama leaves a lasting impression in France. Two weeks later, referring to the Games which are to be held a year later in the capital, the daily newspaper L’Homme Libre expressed concern: “Let us remember the Wembley crashes.”

According to the newspaper, the original sin was indeed the choice of the Olympic stadium in Colombes, north of Paris, in what is not yet called Hauts-de-Seine: “Nothing is yet envisaged to bring , with the minimum of congestion and traffic jams the incessant flow of spectators who will go towards Colombes on these days. […] Many discussions were held about the extension of the metropolitan line; many very seriously uttered nonsense were exchanged about the creation of an aerial train. […] These two projects are a dead letter.” And the diary of playing Cassandra: “It is perhaps not inappropriate to recall the terrible events that recently occurred in England: this multitude of people suffocated, crushed, crushed… […] But great business, great means! Do we have them? …And great responsibilities, too…”

The Olympic sites and how to get to them in the Excelsior of March 19, 1922

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“Those Olympic Games buggers”

A year later, the situation still seems worrying. While the Games were to open on July 5, Le Populaire, in its edition of April 18, 1924, predicted the apocalypse. “Is the problem solvable? What a traffic jam in perspective! Traffic jam expected around the stadium, congestion of cars at the Porte de Champerret, and to put it bluntly, traffic jam in the entire surrounding suburbs. 30,000 cars, on average, will travel every day between Colombes and Paris via a road of very average width. Congestion on the rails also, predicts the newspaper. Between Saint-Lazare and Colombes, it’s going to be coal-fired. “From noon to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., trains will follow each other in both directions every two minutes. […] In anticipation of this intense traffic, the State network is asking the public authorities that the level crossings of Colombes and Bois-Colombes be removed, at certain times of the day. […] Two large towns in the Paris region will be paralyzed in their normal life at a time when car traffic is intense. […] Ah! for suburbanites and even for Parisians, there are some unique times ahead with these Olympic Games buggers.”

Less alarmist than Le Populaire, Paris-Soir of the same date preferred to emphasize the sense of anticipation of the public authorities and announced that “in view of the Olympic Games, the police prefect is regulating traffic”. The imperative: “We must avoid traffic jams at the gates of Paris and accidents and congestion between Paris and Colombes”. Freedom of movement takes a hit in the process. To access Colombes, cars will only be allowed to use one of the seven gates of Paris (Clichy, Asnières, Courcelles, Champerret, Villiers, Ternes and Neuilly). And “traffic will now be on the right,” decided the prefect. But, good news for motorists, they will no longer be hit in the wallet depending on the quantity of gasoline transported, according to the attribution system (contribution received by municipalities for the importation of goods into their territory). For logistical reasons more than Olympic: “The current system would lead to traffic jams without remedy and the tax staff, however numerous they might be, would never manage to accomplish all the work.”

To keep everything running smoothly, “Mr. Paul Guiraud, director of the municipal police” established “the highway code which leads to the Olympic Games,” explains the Work of April 24. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Clausewitz and Napoleon united in the same brain would not have established a more elaborate and detailed strategy to set off on four wheels to attack the Colombes stadium. The official cars will attack through the Porte and Avenue de Neuilly. Private vehicles will drive on another side. The coaches will take to the boulevards Bineau, de Verdun, de Lutèce… “The guarded cars will drop off their travelers on rue Paul-Bert, in front of the Stadium and will reach the garages of their choice via the boulevard d’Achères, or the dyke of Gennevilliers. On exit, the cars will be picked up directly from the garages by their occupants or called to the stadium by telephone, on the condition that they only stop there for the time strictly necessary to charge. Travelers will have to wait for their car and not keep it waiting.”

And the “Le Stade” station, specially designed for the occasion? Neither done nor to be done, scathes the Work. “We designed it small and mean. A few huts with ticket counters and that’s it.” Accessing the stadium from Le Stade resembles a steeplechase: “Imagine a gap a few meters wide made in the embankment of the railway line. […] This is where the crowds will surge. […] The athletes and their spectators will find themselves on an almost impassable country path.” And the newspaper outlines the pitfalls that await the intrepid, concluding venomously: “It was difficult to organize the accident and the traffic jam more safely.”

On July 28, 1924, the Olympic flame not even extinguished, Liberty denounced the organizers for having elected Colombes: “A harmful choice in the first place. How could we expect to make foreigners, or provincials – or even Parisians – make the expensive, chaotic, endless journey from the capital to the distant plains of Colombes on a daily basis?” The Colombians must have appreciated it.