After arrival and a quick dip, including almost drowning a fellow guest because of a complete lack of understanding that a button on the side of the pool sparked a hostile wave machine, we dined in the hotel’s Michelin Guide restaurant, along with the Italian executives of On Location. Apart from the ubiquitous prawn there was also exquisite wine. A 1999 Francesco Rinaldi & Figli Barolo to be precise, one of the best I have sampled, before we entered fully into the Olympic spirit with our Italian hosts to cheer on Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson to gold in the women’s 800 metres.
The following day, after a full buffet breakfast, we were whisked in a plush bus to the Bercy Arena and an executive box to watch the men’s basketball quarter-final between Germany and Greece. There was a buffet of prawn cocktail, a full cheese selection, smoked salmon and scrambled egg. At 2pm, we had a lunch booking at the chic Parisian department store the Samaritaine where, thankfully, I was able to buy a new belt. By then I had reached the stage where I missed feeling hungry.
But it was at the basketball that I realised that for all the Paris grandeur, the foie gras and Moët & Chandon, and for all those godforsaken prawns, without sporting drama, the whole escapade would have been quite pointless. When the sport sings, just as the men’s basketball quarter-final did, the hospitality is the perfect accompaniment. I arrived in Paris expecting to be ambivalent towards the sport and bowled over by the hospitality, but in actual fact they are mutually dependent. And if Milan-Cortina blends the two as harmoniously as Paris did, then it will be some Games.
