The Olympic flame's day in Paris was a mess. I spent a few hours in the midst of yesterday's demonstrations, beginning with the sinister start below the Eiffel tower under the guard of hundreds of police and Chinese security.
Yet, despite the débâcle which ended with the Chinese rushing the flame out of town on a bus, it is impossible not to detect a little satisfaction in the air. The relay was a chaotic fiasco, marred by jeering crowds and scuffles with the militant pro-Tibetans. The torch-bearers, mainly French former champions, had a miserable time between hostile crowds and the strong-arm tactics of their Chinese handlers. President Sarkozy's government had reason to be embarrassed. But there is a feeling today that, even if it was futile, France at least made a gesture by venting its discontent over the Beijing games and human rights. I say France because the demonstrators enjoyed quite broad support. France prides itself on being "the home of human rights" and it likes a bit of rebellion and creative disorder in the name of a cause. The Beijing torch relay from the Eiffel tower down the Champs Elysées and on to Notre Dame cathedral offered the right moment and symbols. By the end of the afternoon yesterday, the demonstrations had become a festive occasion, joined by teenagers and office-workers.
Laurent Joffrin, Editor of Libération, was for once happy this morning. "Paris rediscovered its sense of revolt for the occasion. It took it upon itself to remind the world that hypocrisy has a limit," he wrote. "The Olympic flame has turned into a shameful candle-end."
Naturally the leftwing world was fully behind the la manif. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, hung a rights banner across the front of the City Hall. Green councillors added a more aggressive one so the Chinese cancelled the ceremony there and the torch convoy sped past the Mayor without stopping. He shrugged and said: "The cohabitation of the Olympics and human rights disturbs them. That's their problem. We were ready to receive them but not to sacrifice our principles."
But there was also quiet support from President Sarkozy's conservative political camp. Half a dozen members of parliament for his Union for a Popular Movement joined a protest by mainly leftwing legislators outside the National Assembly. The organisers ordered the convoy to cancel a stop there.
On one level, the chaotic day made a mockery of the crowd control skills of the well equipped French police. They had said that the torch would be protected by an inviolable 200-metre long "security bubble". This burst within minutes. In the thick of it, however, I got the impression that they were not trying very hard. There were a few punch-ups but little of the brute force usually employed by the CRS riot police. Most of them were not wearing helmets and body armour. The feeling was confirmed this morning by Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, who is national police chief.
She essentially blamed the Chinese embassy for the mess. They had controlled the day's events and the police had been there to help keep order for them. "We had to balance this with the right of people to demonstrate," she said on Europe 1 radio.
Sarkozy watched events on television as the torch ran past the Elysée Palace. His people hope that the public excitement will cool because there is not much that they can do to satisfy public discontent over China. Sarko is maintaining his threat to stay away from the opening ceremony in Beijing in August but few imagine him doing so.
[Headline: China: the slap in the face]
Meet Virginie Guyot. She flies Mirage fighter jets for the French air force and has done two tours based at Kandahar in the Afghan war zone. Captain Guyot, who is 33 and a mother, has just made the news by becoming the first woman assigned to la Patrouille de France, the air force display team.
The eight-jet Patrouille is one of the best. It is equal or superior to the US Air Force Thunderbirds and Britain's RAF Red Arrows. Its tight formation aerobatics is breath-taking (watch one of their videos). Every July 14, the team opens the Bastille Day parade with a low-level run down the Champs Elysees trailing their trademark tricolor smoke.
Guyot, whose father was in the military, got the bug with her first flight in a light aircraft at the age of 12. She is due to become commander of the Patrouille from next year. She never saw flying as a men-only job, she says. "Flying a plane nowadays requires finesse more than physical force."
That has been the case for decades. Only in movies do pilots wrestle with the controls. Most planes are flown with the tips of the fingers. The need for delicacy is part of the reason why women make such good pilots -- including aerobatic ones. Look at Patty Wagstaff who in the 1990s was US aerobatics champion three times. When she was asked how a woman could beat men at such a demanding sport, she used to reply: "Do you think the airplane knows the difference?".
Another advantage is female judgment.
Continue reading "French pilots show women can fly" »
Europe is in a tangle over this summer's Olympic games in Beijing. Foreign Ministers of the Union are trying to reach a consensus today in Slovenia over the matter of using them to apply pressure on China. They will not manage because opinion is divided. This is a good moment to find out what readers of this blog think.
France and Britain have taken opposite sides, as President Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, made clear in London on Thursday. For Brown there is no question of even thinking about a boycott or staying away from the opening ceremony. The Olympics are purely about sport and London wants the best games possible, not least because it fears trouble when it hosts them in 2012. Sarkozy, however, is threatening to cancel his trip to the opening ceremony unless Beijing mends its ways, towards Tibet in particular.
There are other European approaches. In Poland, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, has canceled his trip to Beijing and he urged other democratic politicians to do the same. Germany's Angela Merkel said that she is not going to the ceremony but had never intended to.
It's all a bit of a mess. The subject produced lively argument in a French TV show in which I took part today (Canal+ here. Click on 'L'émission de la semaine). In France, a country that prides itself on its sensitivity to human rights, the political world, media and public favour some gesture of disapproval towards Beijing's conduct in Tibet and to register distaste over the nature of the Chinese regime. They do not support a sporting boycott but a CSA opinion poll this week showed that 53 percent want national leaders to stay away from the opening ceremony. Sarkozy's threat was the least he could do after two weeks of public pressure. Despite the posturing, it is obvious that he will turn up in Beijing in August because he is as reluctant to incur Chinese displeasure as other leaders with heavy commercial interests at stake. A campaign for boycotting French goods is already under way at a site on SOHU.com, one of the big Chinese internet portals.
For the moment, though, France will make a little trouble. When French-led protesters flashed a banner at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens, the act was largely cheered here. It was seen as a grain of sand in the Chinese propaganda machine and there will be a lot more protests when the torch reaches Paris. Leading politicians from the Socialist opposition will take part.
The same incident was treated quite differently in the British media. They talked of "anti-China protesters" disrupting the Athens ceremony and they ran headlines on "fears" for the torch's passage through London.
The Times delivered an unequivocal endorsement of the games in an editorial today: "The newspaper ardently opposes any suggestion of a boycott, which would be unfair to the athletes ... self-defeating for those who want to see greater freedom in China and malicious towards a country and a people who have traveled so far to celebrate their achievements as a nation and their re-engagement with the world."
Our editorial was a response to an internet campaign in China against Jane Macartney, our Beijing correspondent. She reports today that she has become the most hated person in the country after the Government cited a Times commentator (not her) who had compared the Beijing Olympics to Nazi Germany's 1936 games.
In her report, Macartney, a Mandarin speaker who knows the country well, makes a strong anti-boycott case: The Chinese see the games as "a moment when they want to celebrate, with the world, their achievements, development and prosperity of the past three decades."
As no expert on China I bow to those with knowledge, but I recall that similar arguments were used about the Moscow Olympics of 1980. President Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher, the US and British leaders of the time, led a sporting boycott that caused misery for the sportsmen and turned the games into a fiasco. That prompted a less effective retaliation by the Soviet bloc against the 1984 Los Angeles games. The Russians were understandably angry in 1980, but the message of international disapproval struck home. I was in Moscow in the run-up to those games and then for three years in the aftermath. The boycott -- ostensibly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- added to the pressure that eventually unraveled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.
Those were other times. China is a whole different story and I am not naive. But there is a similarity. Moscow's ruling communist party regarded the 1980 games primarily as a vehicle for political propaganda. They invested in them massively as a showcase for the Soviet state. Beijing's communist government is doing the same for its system.
I read in the US media today that Coca Cola and the other big Beijing games sponsors are now worried about possible damage to their image from their association with China's great event. It's odd that they did not see this coming a long time ago.
 Meet the new minister for French sport. Two days after France's rugby rout at the hands of Argentina, Bernard Laporte, the team manager, joins President Sarkozy's cabinet tomorrow with a loser's aura and the threat of investigation for tax fraud.
Political insiders are betting that Laporte, 43, blamed for France's pitiful fourth place in the World Cup, will not last long in the post of State Secretary for Youth and Sport. Sarko offered ambiguous support over the weekend after word that inspectors had reported false book-keeping and other serious irregularities in Laporte's varied business activites.
Continue reading "Sarko seeks distance from Mad Bernie, his losing pal" »
The English destroy the dream of an entire nation. So said the headline in le Parisien this morning after England ejected France from the rugby world cup in a semi-final that had stirred a wave of patriotic hope.
Rugby is only a game -- and one that is played only in parts of France -- but the match yesterday had been invested with all kinds of symbolism. It's always like that when the two ancestral enemies face off on a sports field. After their miraculous elimination of New Zealand last week, France believed that Gallic flair would triumph over the stolid rosbifs. They led for much of the game, but the genius was missing. Instead of daring runs to touch down, they kicked and blocked. The word today was that France blew it "by playing like the English".
Bernard Lapasset, the president of the French Rugby Association, sounded off on this theme after the 9-14 loss, largely to the magic boot of Jonny Wilkinson. "I don't understand the way we played tonight," Lapasset said. "When you play against the English, you don't play like the English. You play à la francaise and pass the ball."
The man being blamed this morning, inevitably, is Bernard Laporte, the team manager who is due to take over as President Sarkozy's Sports Minister next week. Sarko will still give him the job, but he may not last long.
As drunken English fans were still staggering around the Left Bank early this morning, l'Equipe, the sports daily, summed up the gloom. "The only thing that is beautiful is victory, especially when it is achieved against our strange neighbours. ... The big lesson of yesterday's match is this: the English won because they never gave up being English. So English."
A disappointed French fan summed up the disgust on the lunchtime TF1 television news: "Ces anglais nous feront chier jusqu' à la fin de nos jours [Roughly: Those English are going to screw us around until the end of our days]
France will now try to forget about rugby for a while -- at least after next weekend's final -- but the defeat is adding to a down mood as the country faces the first show-down between President Sarkozy and the unions (last posting).
It's certainly not going to be a great week for Sarkozy, who watched France's rugby defeat in the stadium along with half a dozen of his ministers. By all accounts, he is going to go public this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, over his estrangement from Cécilia. I have held off posting on this for a week because nothing has emerged beyond the fact that Mrs Sarkozy spent a couple of days in Geneva. I have heard that David Martinon, the presidential spokesman, will make a statement on the couple's separation. That comes from a reliable source in the Elysée Palace, but he cautioned that plans there are changing all the time. And that's getting away from the rugby.
[For anyone interested in seeing how the rugby, Cecilia and French politics tie together, here's a link to a TV show that I took part in yesterday on Canal +. They have split the topics into segments.]
There was joy in the air this morning when I jogged up the Avenue de la Grande Armée. France had just confounded everyone's expectations, including its own, and knocked New Zealand out of the world rugby cup. In the morning sunshine on the cafe terraces people were sharing their amazement over "the incredible victory". A gaggle of mournful New Zealanders were nursing their hangovers and joking about suicide. It was almost as if Paris was celebrating one of the Napoleonic victories inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe just up the street.
The 20-18 victory was so extraordinary because no-one had given France a chance against the invincible All Blacks. The players themselves sounded defeated in advance and comedians were joking all week about ambulance planes that would be flying back the French survivors from the massacre of Cardiff. Even at half time, with New Zealand 10 points ahead, they had started mourning in the bars around my home.
Then the old French flair suddenly revived and the team that became a national joke after going down to Argentina rose up and "committed history" as the TV commentator put it. Looking back, everyone said they could tell that a miracle was in the air after the French players faced down the All Blacks, eye-ball to eye-ball as they performed their Haka war dance before the start of play.
They danced in the streets all night in Paris, which was already staying up late to celebrate the "Nuit Blanche" -- Mayor Delanoe's annual all-night festival of arts. The exaltation was strongest in Toulouse, France's rugby capital. At four am there they were still singing On ira tous au paradis (We'll all go to heaven), an old pop hit that has become the rugby anthem.
The newspapers ran out of superlatives today. "Gigantic!" said the headline in le Parisien. "This victory, which will go down in history without a doubt, has been given to us by a French side that has stunned the world."
It may be only a game -- and a quarter final at that -- but the victory is balm for the national soul. After all the talk of decline and the feeling that France has lost out and can't do things right any more, its team has beaten the favourites. It also helps that the sport was invented, and dominated for most of its history, by les Anglo-Saxons.
And of course we all know who will make sure he gets the credit: Nicolas Sarkozy. France's new number one rugby fan leaped out of his seat in the Cardiff stadium and danced at his team's first try. "This was a match for history," he told the players in the changing room after. "In 20 years people will say 'I was there'." The implicit message was: "Under Sarko, France wins."
I'd prefer to see the epic victory as an illustration of the old saying, Impossible n'est pas français. But Sarko already purloined that for his campaign slogan last sping: "Tomorrow, everything becomes possible."
Next weekend France meets England in the semi-final. They are playing it modest today, sayng that it won't be a walk-over. But, after beating England in two friendlies just before the cup, France should make it to the last round. If they then manage to win, there will be no stopping the jubilation.
We may all be one European village nowadays, but it's interesting to note how people in each country are often preoccupied by completely different events.
Take the case of Madeleine McCann. A French TV show* has asked me on to explain the British media's fascination for what has seemed -- until this week's developments -- to be a sad but banal case of child abduction.
The story has intrigued France because of the way that, seen from this side of the Channel, the British have gone out of their minds. How, they are wondering, can one sad fait divers -- random news item -- drive such a tidal wave of media cover ? I won't court trouble here with my own view, but it's worth noting how news for one country is sometimes meaningless for another. Look at the affair of Janet Jackson's nipple in the USA -- or France's obsession in the early 1990s with the case of le Petit Gregory, the drowning of a village boy whose killer was never identified.
To illustrate the point, here is the list of the top 10 topics that the French are talking about. The Ifop polling company keeps tabs on this for Paris Match, asking the question: Which subjects have you talked about most this week with those around you at home and in the work place?"
1 -- The Rugby World Cup
2 -- The death of Luciano Pavarotti
3 -- The closure of 11,200 jobs at the Education Ministry
4- Plans for raising the retirement age
5 -- President Sarkozy's new scheme for tackling Alzheimer's disease
6 -- The utilities merger between Gaz de France and Suez
7 -- The possible introduction of a four-day school week
8 -- Cecilia Sarkozy's refusal to appear before a parliamentary inquiry on her mission to Libya
9 -- Gang fights at the Paris Gare du Nord rail terminus.
10 - Government plans to raise value added tax to pay for social security.
Final note: A campaign is under way to have the French media stage a Sarko-free day next month.
* The TV show is Un cafe, l'addition, Pascale Clark's talk show on Canal + at 13h55 on Saturday.
Pulling the cork from a bottle of rosé last night I realised that I had been caught up in the rugby madness that has taken over France as it prepares to host the World Cup from this Friday. When I bought the wine, from the southwestern town of Gaillac, I hadn't noticed the name on the label: Bernard Laporte.
Laporte, as we saw last week, is the national rugby manager, businessman and television personality who has been co-opted by President Sarkozy as sports minister after the cup final in Paris on October 21. With his usual flair for seizing the mood of the moment, Super-Sarko has adopted rugby as the symbol of his invincible, can-do presidency.
Rugbymania has been building since France discovered a taste for a minority sport that is played traditionally in the foie gras and armagnac country of the southwest and in Paris. The English "game for hooligans played by gentlemen" has now become a metaphor for French values and team spirit.
Continue reading "France fêtes rugby, Sarko orders victory" »
In what context would Britain's Queen Elizabeth rank just above Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist, but one spot below Dave, an ageing Dutch pop singer?
Give up ? The three landed midway in a list of France's 25 favourite Europeans. Number one was Ellen MacArthur, the British ocean sailor and 25th was Jose Manuel Barroso, the Portuguese president of the European Commission ("Who?", non-Europeans must be wondering).
This 2006 list is a good example of France's mania for opinion polls. The French do not go for American-style rankings, those unscientific, whimsical lists of such things as "the world's" (English-speaking) best jokes, worst sitcoms or things you must do before you reach 30. But they apply serious polling effort to sounding national opinion on just about everything.
One of the oldest fixtures of la sondomanie, as Gallic poll addiction is known, is a twice-yearly national survey of France's 50 favourite people.
Started in 1988 by the IFOP polling company for JDD, the main Sunday newspaper, this poll throws up a strange assortment of sports and showbiz stars, charity workers, politicians and television personalities.
Continue reading "France's favourite people" »
It's the time of year again when France observes a modern tradition: the lament over drug-taking by riders in the Tour de France.
The 94th edition of the world's biggest cycle race starts on Saturday in London. For the geographically alert, yes, the British capital is not in France, but the three-week test of human endurance sometimes visits neighbouring territory before finishing on the Champs Elysées. This is the first time in London for the great Tour caravan.
The event is once again over-shadowed by the endless scandal over doping. Floyd Landis, last year's winner, is fighting an implausible campaign to retain the title that was cast into doubt when he failed a drug test. Suspicion lingers over Lance Armstrong, the American who won every year from 1999 to 2005. In the past month, former riders have confessed to using EPO (erythropoietin), the favourite doping agent for would-be wearers of the Yellow Jersey.
The latest wheeze to clean up the sport is a pledge of purity that riders must sign for the International Cycling Union. If they do not publicly reject performance-enhancing drugs, they do not ride. Most have complied.
That's the background for this video. Among all the hand-wringing and media debate, a couple of enterprising song-writers have scored a hit with a joke song on the joys of doping. Posing as a Mexican mariachi cycle team, they sing in French and Spanish: "EPO te quiero, grace à toi je serai numero uno" ["EPO I love you, thanks to you I will be number one"]
Continue reading "The funny side of the Tour de France" »
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times and has previously reported from New York and Brussels.
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