Athletes enjoy their first days in the giant Olympic village ahead of the Paris Games – Lowell Sun

FILE – People walk in front of the canteen in the Olympic Village during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, July 22, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, Pool, File)

By JEROME PUGMIRE AP Sports Journalist

PARIS (AP) — Australian beach volleyball player Taliqua Clancy got an unexpected surprise Monday as she walked through the athletes’ village at the Paris Olympics.

Among the many other athletes from all over the world, one person stood out: French President Emmanuel Macron.

“We saw him, which was cool. I hung around hoping to get a selfie, but I had to come here” for a news conference, she told reporters with a laugh. She probably wouldn’t have gotten close enough anyway, as Macron’s security team led her away.

“But hopefully we can still see some familiar faces,” said Clancy, who is one of 66 Indigenous athletes on Australia’s Olympic team in Paris – six more than in Tokyo.

“I am a proud Aboriginal person and it is special to have the art and design in the village,” said Clancy, 32.

Clancy and her teammate Mariafe Artacho del Solar won the silver medal at the Tokyo Games three years ago.

Artacho del Solar gave her first impressions of the village, which is home to more than 14,000 athletes and officials and has the surface area of ​​70 football fields.

“It’s been great so far, it feels really safe,” she said. “We walked around today and got some good old pictures of the rings.”

The village itself is in the suburb of Saint-Denis, famous in the sporting world as the home of the Stade de France, where the French national football and rugby teams play. It is located in a formerly neglected area that has now been transformed into a vibrant international hub for the Paris Olympics from 26 July to 11 August and the Paralympic Games from 28 August to 8 September.

“It’s great to see so many different countries here,” United States rugby sevens centre Lucas Lacamp said Monday.

The village features a large dining hall with several food stations catering to the needs of people from all over the world, a large gym, training fields for various sports, an outpatient clinic, prayer rooms and an anti-doping center.

“I was definitely looking forward to the food court, I won’t lie,” said New Zealand rugby sevens player Risaleanna Pouri-Lane, who won the women’s gold medal in Tokyo. “It was pretty cool. We had a few days to take in the whole village and the Olympic environment.”

Andrew Knewstubb, silver medalist at the men’s rugby tournament in Tokyo, explained the big difference between Tokyo, which was hit by the pandemic three years ago, and Paris.

“The most noticeable thing is that people aren’t wearing masks,” Knewstubb said, adding that he likes that athletes can now greet each other or come up and exchange pins “without the hesitation of Covid.”

Athletes live in five residential areas, each named after a famous area of ​​Paris: Abbesses, Bastille, Dauphine, Étoile, Fêtes. In an effort to protect the environment, the eco-friendly village has electric cars that athletes drive around. Pouri-Lane enjoyed riding one of the many bicycles athletes were allowed to use.

Former track cyclist Anna Meares is a four-time Olympian and two-time gold medalist. Meares is now Chef de Mission for the Australian team and said decisions have been made about the team’s residency in the village.

“We learned a lot from Tokyo, and that has played a role in the decisions we have made in our organization,” she said.

One of them was more important than it might sound.

“We kept our barista,” she said. “A big question I asked myself when I took on this role was, ‘Why was the barista so popular?’ And it was because it created a social hub for the athletes.”

Meanwhile, the United States men’s rugby sevens team prepares for a key match on Wednesday against host nation France, which has arguably the world’s best player in scrum half Antoine Dupont.

“The preparation has been good. They’ve really taken care of us; fields were good, facilities were good,” U.S. captain Kevon Williams said. “It’s been smooth sailing for us. We’re ready for the moment.”

That moment will involve witnessing the roar of a sold-out crowd of 80,000 at the Stade de France. It should be quite an experience for Williams and his teammates in France’s famous national stadium, but beach volleyball players may have the best venue of all.

They play their matches against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, which, compared to other iconic stadiums, is hard to beat.

“I’m not biased at all, but I think this is the best location of all,” Artacho del Solar said. “It’s going to be great.”

They got a taste of what was to come when they watched a video of the Australian men completing their training there.

“We know it’s going to be exciting and thrilling, as beach volleyball always is,” said Clancy, whose first task during her first training session was to test the wind, the depth of the sand and the quality of the grit.

Alex Turnbull of Charles de Gaulle Airport contributed to this report.