Can the Olympics change an area’s reputation?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2024
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re in the Paris suburb of Seine -Saint-Denis which will host most of the games this summer.
It’s an area with some of the highest levels of poverty in the whole of France, and a bad reputation.
In the minds of most French people, the area conjures up images of drugs, crime and riots.
Locals say that reputation is unfair – and they’re hoping the investment of the games, and a place on the world stage, goes some way to changing that. But can it?
Presented and produced by John Laurenson
(Image: Inside the Aquatic Olympic Center (CAO). It will host artistic swimming, diving and water-polo. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Una Chaplin and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells the story of how my |
| 0:07.7 | grandfather Charlie Chaplin and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. |
| 0:15.4 | Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.4 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm John Lawrenson. |
| 0:28.2 | Today I'm in an area just east of Paris in France called Sen-Sandini, because it's here, actually, |
| 0:34.7 | and not in Paris proper, where most of the so-called Paris Olympics |
| 0:39.0 | will be taking place this summer. |
| 0:41.5 | It's an area that, coming up for two years ago, |
| 0:44.2 | made a reputation for itself abroad. |
| 0:50.0 | There's hundreds of people running around, caught in trouble. |
| 0:53.0 | Somebody snatched his ticket out of his hand. |
| 0:55.4 | When Liverpool football fans waiting to get into the Stad de France |
| 0:58.7 | to see a European Champions League final against Real Madrid, |
| 1:02.9 | before being tear-gassed by the police and accused of hooliganism by the Interior Minister, |
| 1:08.7 | were attacked by hundreds of local youths, as they told the Parisian newspaper. |
| 1:15.1 | They had my wife by her here. She was screaming. She was asking for help. At this point, I'm concussed. |
| 1:21.8 | I don't want to go back to France. Do not go to the Olympics. |
| 1:25.5 | Since Anthony has one of the highest immigrant origin populations in France and has high levels of poverty. |
| 1:32.7 | In French minds, it's associated with problems, drugs, crime, terrorism and riots in particular. |
| 1:39.6 | The Olympics is its big chance. |
| 1:42.1 | The Olympic village and Olympic pools are being built here. |
| 1:45.0 | Most of the running, jumping and throwing will be at the Stade de France also here. |
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