Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — The huge, multicolored interlocking Olympic rings that adorned the Eiffel Tower in Paris for the 2024 Summer Games were supposed to come down after the Paralympics for athletes with disabilities end on Sunday.
But Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has other plans, although not everyone in France agrees.
"I want this festive spirit to remain," Hidalgo recently told the Ouest-France regional newspaper, according to a translation, saying, "The French have fallen in love with Paris again" after a decade of bashing their nation's capital. She said hosting the Olympics and Paralympics should not be seen as a side note but as an "historic moment," built and shared by the French.
"I want this festive spirit to remain," Hidalgo said in what was billed as an exclusive interview, declaring that the rings will remain the iconic landmark. "As mayor of Paris, the decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the (International Olympic Committee). So yes, they will stay on the Eiffel Tower."
However, the 30-ton rings, which are 95 feet wide and 43 feet high, are too heavy to be left up and will be replaced with lighter versions, CNN reported.
"We have so many questions not resolved yet because the original rings were heavy and built for temporary times, so we'll bring them down and create new ones to keep them for a long time," Paris' deputy mayor, Pierre Rabadan, told CNN. "We are not changing the Eiffel Tower, we are just adding something for some time."
He said the Olympic committee is paying for a technical study of replacing the rings and could also pick up the cost for something roughly the same size but only "visible when we want them to be, and sometimes they will be less so," according to a report posted by France 24.
At a news conference Friday, Hidalgo told reporters the rings will stay up at least through the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
"The proposal that I have made for the rings ... is a proposal that until 2028, until the Games in Los Angeles, we will leave the rings on the Eiffel Tower," the Socialist mayor in office since 2014 said, according to Le Monde. "Perhaps after 2028, they'll stay and maybe they won't. Let's see."
Her critics include political opponents as well as the thousands of people who have signed an online petition against keeping the rings. Descendants of Gustave Eiffel, the engineer who built the metal tower that bears his name, have also raised concerns.
"It does not seem appropriate to us that the Eiffel Tower, which has become the symbol of Paris and the whole of France since its construction 135 years ago, has the symbol of an outside organization added to it in a permanent way, whatever its prestige," the Association of Gustave Eiffel's Descendants said in a statement.
The chairman of the association, Eiffel's great-great grandson, Olivier Berthelot-Eiffel, told Agence France-Presse the family did not see any problem with the rings staying "a little longer."
"But the Eiffel Tower should not become an advertising outpost," Berthelot-Eiffel said. "Anne Hidalgo should have said that she wanted to keep the Olympic rings, not that she had decided it, and then discussed the idea with the Paris council and relevant individuals."
