09Aug 24
Swimming, the Italian Acerenza is fourth: the Senna torment ends
The curtain falls (finally) on the waters of the Seine, with everyone’s approval: triathletes, swimmers, organizers, all French people. It closes with the 10 km swim which, after yesterday’s fantastic bronze by Geneva Taddeucci today gives the Azzurri a fourth place for Domenico Acerenza. The end then. The end of a tormented chapter of these “macroniads”, the Games that show the best of France to the world, where reality is no longer what it is, what you see, touch and smell. Where reality can become what you want or what you have decided it to be. And so the pouring rain, under which over two hundred heads of state were left on the day of the inauguration is nothing more than a laughable accident along the way or not even that: because perhaps it rained? And so theLast Supper with Drag Queens it is not the Last Supper but a seventeenth-century painting depicting the Greek gods on Olympus on the occasion of the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. Or a reference to Gargantua and Pantagruel, the series of novels written by François Rabelais in the first half of the sixteenth century. Or something else. And then the Seine is not hazelnut colored as it appears but green, blue, red, you just have to decide. And then And then the Belgian, Swiss, Norwegian athletes were not infected in the waters of the great river but elsewhere or perhaps they were not infected at all. And who knows what else could happen in this Olympics that shows the best France, the most efficient, organized, sustainable, secular and inclusive. We are witnessing another French revolution, without blood or guillotines in the streets. A “French revolution 2.0” that in the era of fake newsof the fact-checkingof doubt regardless, of realities that are never absolute again imposes on the world another great principle to be placed alongside Liberty, Equality and Fraternity: “pre-truth”. An absolute dogma around which these Olympic Games revolve for now and then we’ll see. As is so fashionable to say today, what counts is the “narration”. And the official narrative says that the French have decided that there should be no doubts or uncertainties about this Olympics. So the Seine can be bathed in from one day to the next, from one night to the next, even if no one believes it, even if they are not… And then reality becomes what che serves. A swimming challenge in a blue river that couldn’t be bluer…