Eight days have passed since the start of the European Games in Baku. The organizers still have nine left before lowering the curtain, Sunday June 28, on the first edition of the continental event. Mid-term assessment: everything is fine.
However, things got off to a bad start. On the eve of the opening, last weekend, a shuttle mowed down three young Austrian girls from the synchronized swimming team, in the athletes' village. The most seriously affected was immediately taken care of by the country's authorities, urgently repatriated in one of the Head of State's personal planes and operated on in Austria. The bus driver allegedly confused the brake and accelerator pedals. He is now sleeping in prison.
Since then, an opening ceremony at the astronomical cost of 84 million euros (a figure announced by a reliable source, the Minister of Sports, Azad Rahimov) has nicely launched the mechanics. The sequel did not disappoint anyone. Great calm, in the good sense of the word.
Transportation? Fluids. Certainly, the organizers had the strange idea of stretching out the bus route linking the athlete and media villages to the different competition sites. Result: a good three quarters of an hour are necessary to complete a journey usually covered in 15 minutes. But the shuttles run like a dream, on their Olympic track, without stopping. Clarification: they are preceded by a police car with its flashing lights on. Class.
The volunteers? An army of 10.000 young, smiling and attentive Azerbaijanis, dressed in the official uniform, a lavender blue polo shirt (our photo). Simon Clegg, the boss of the Games, and his entire team, wear the same one. Surprise: these volunteers speak, for the most part, almost perfect English.
The competitions? Of an unequal level. But we expected it. Wrestling, taekwondo, boxing, karate, were excellent. Table tennis, one of the few sports to distribute a direct ticket to the Rio Games in 2016, was marked by a men's singles final between the two best players in Europe, the German Dimitrij Ovtcharov and the Belarusian Vladimir Samsonov. Solid. No complaints.
Athletics and swimming look less good. We expected that, too. But judo, at the end of the week, should greatly improve the curriculum. The Baku Games were chosen to host the European championships in the discipline. A concordance of the two events which could, we are told, multiply in future editions. To have.
In the medal standings, Russia leads the race, with 49 places on the podium, including 27 titles. Azerbaijan is in second place: 30 medals, including 13 gold. The country pinches itself to believe it. The organizers are rubbing their hands. Even if it means paying so much, you might as well treat yourself to the emotion of hearing the national anthem here or there.
Simon Clegg, the head of the organizing committee, follows the ritual of the press conference every morning. At the Hilton, please. The exercise could prove uncertain, faced with foreign media looking for a bone to gnaw on. But there too, calm reigns. The only “crunchy” subject: the crowds in the stands. Day after day, Simon Clegg announces his very respectable figures: more than 30.000 spectators for the day of Thursday June 18, with a site occupancy rate of 74%. “But television images regularly show many empty seats,” the reporters retort. TRUE. “In fact, we have noticed that not all spectators stay from the start to the end of a session,” explains Simon Clegg calmly. But there's not much we can do about it. We have not planned a system for exchanging tickets at the exit of the sites. »
So far, everything is fine.
